


the waves never break they build

by themikeymonster



Series: brokemachine!verse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky and the Soldier are the Same Person, Bucky's Memory is Swiss Cheese, Civil War Team Iron Man, Ding Dong Bucky Thinks You're Wrong, Natasha's Brutal Opinion of Tony Stark, Pre-Slash, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 01:07:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themikeymonster/pseuds/themikeymonster
Summary: They wake him up and attach a limb to him and arm him and tell him to fight. It's not the same, Bucky reminds himself… but he has to remind himself.--the BuckyPov coda toa broke machine just blowin' steam.What happened between Siberia and Tony jumping into a wormhole after Bucky Barnes. AKA: please witness Bucky's bizarre fixation on Tony Stark.





	the waves never break they build

**Author's Note:**

> **me:** I already wrote the coworkers-to-friends (working on the to-lovers) part, I don't want to write the enemies-to-coworkers part  
>  **also me:** [writes this fic]  
>  \---
> 
>  **01.30.18** : small edits made thanks to autocorrect ('if' when it should be 'of'), wrong tenses, repetition. Made large edits to the first scene where Bucky asks if Stark is alive; bears re-reading. Made large edits to the Meeting Stark scene; bears re-reading. Crtl+F "Oh, no." Starts a little before that line.

* * *

 

The persistent feeling of being badly shattered pieces reassembled in haste, without care to which edge fits where, is only barely held at bay by the shearing agony of his missing arm. It could be worse. Has been worse. The electrical feedback is mostly steady enough that he can clench his shoulder and ride it out. The hum of the plane does the rest. His commanding officer lingers nearby.

No. Not his commanding officer - but yes. No, wait. Is? Isn't? For now: is. Until things make more sense, anyway. Better not to question it until the situation has been assessed. If he has been misled, retrieval efforts will already be underway.

(Is it better not to question it? He thinks at least once he'd struggled against that kind of thing. It's hard to remember right now. Once? Twice? _No._ )

"Just a little bit longer, now," his commanding officer says. "Hang in there, Buck."

Right. 'Buck.' Bucky. That's the name he answers to now (not _jamesoryakovoryasha)_. Bucky-friend-of-Steve-Rogers. Some of the pieces begin to look a little more familiar. Steve found him again - or no, _they_ found him again. Steve, too, but _they_ are the important ones. Not the agents that come in the night, that he can stifle and silence with no one the wiser. He'd been framed. They'd turned the world against him to flush him out. Because -

A spicy scent fills his nose - or the memory of that scent, expensive, woodsy, made with oils and not alcohol extracts. Wool. Dry cleaning products - quality, not cheap. Leather, and polishes, sealants. Careful steps, deliberately moving over the metal floor of the plane. Each sends his pulse rocketing faster.

In dread, he opens his eyes, just as six feet of tailored woolen suit comes to a deliberate stop in front if where he is slumped down into the wall of the plane. Every seam pinned just so, beard trimmed to unnatural precision, as if a machine had dictated it, and behind amber lenses, dark, piercing eyes - like black holes. Like starless skies. Like the wrong end of a loaded barrel above perfectly calm hands that don't shake, a purposeful finger curled to the trigger.

He - the man who goes by Bucky - doesn't so much as twitch. Doesn't blink. Barely breathes. None of these things will help him now. Fighting back never does.

"Bucky?"

The next few seconds are a haze of agony and desperation. It isn't until his head starts spinning from a lack of oxygen that things slow down enough for him to make sense of them - that he's on a plane, leaving Siberia. That Steve has him in a body hold, arms locked around his neck, the arteries just compressed enough that his brain is beginning to starve. With the one hand he has, he pats Steve's elbow until it finally unlocks, and he rolls away, sucking air.

The plane hold is empty, other than the man in the black suit standing in the doorway, not interfering. It smells of nothing but blood and pain and sweat and metal.

"You back with us?" Steve asks suspiciously.

"Think so," he says. It's a better answer than the truth.

"You went away there for a moment," Steve points out, not looking away. It's carefully neutral. "You just - check out often?"

He finally stops looking around the hold, searching for hiding spots or other entries or exits. Stark being in the plane with them would be a nightmare. The alternative is -

"Sometimes," he allows, his stomach clenching around bitterness and bile. The man in the door - King T'Challa - has disappeared, and he wonders if that, too, had been a part of it. It happens more often than he would like it to. Since as long as he can remember, honestly. That it's happening now, the way it had is - "Steve," he says, harsh. Hollow. "Steve."

He looks into the eyes of the man beside him, who treats corners like tactically sound escape routes, who trusts the word of a broken man over his own teammates, and wishes that he recognized more of him. Any of him. Any mannerism or decision or combat technique.

"Steve," he says, "is Stark alive?"

The question clearly catches Steve off guard. He stares back at Bucky, his jaw slowly clenching tight enough to break teeth. There's something cold and remote and desperate and lonely in his eyes. There's something there, eerily familiar but uncanny. Wrong. Bucky's used to being able to divine someone's intentions toward him a mile away - if they think he's homeless, or mad, or both. If they pity him or if they're doing something simply to feel good about themselves. If they think he's handsome under the hair, the cap, the bulky, loose, ill fitting clothes. If he reminds them of a son or a friend or brother or husband. A father.

He doesn't recognize anything in the blue eyes Steve fixes on him, except the fact that he's seen those eyes before in men that buckle, snap and shatter in ugly ways. That stare at him and right through him despite Steve's best efforts. "He's fine," Steve says, and it sounds like the same kind of lies those men told. Buckling. Snapping. Shattering.

Men he had put bullets in, fifty-fifty, because they couldn't be trusted. Consciences that drove them to shoot a captive to keep them from suffering an interrogation. Dead because of the weight of another man's sins.

Bucky blinks back, soft and slow, and wonders if this one has buckled yet. If Stark is supposed to be fine - or, judging by his own wounds, and Steve's, at least  _alive -_ then why was Stark standing here on the plane with them? If it had been the real thing, Steve wouldn't be so calm. Or he'd have said something about it when Bucky asked.

Fifty-fifty, the Soldier had killed those shattering men with guilty consciences they took out on others. But this isn't HYDRA, he reminds himself, and no one made Steve do anything he hadn't chosen for himself, so Bucky tries for a smile until Steve looks discomfited enough to look away.

"I just disabled the armor," Steve says, still not looking at him. "You must have heard him as we left."

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, reaching up to scrub at the blood caked on his face. He remembers, too, how long it sometimes took for people to die. Those who don't know these things always think it happens quick and fast, but that's rarely the truth of it. Death's an ugly thing. It takes time, and people always struggle. It can take a while before it catches up to them. Minutes. Sometimes hours. And if that's - if that's the reality of it, then they're already too late to turn back and save Stark.

More than too late, he thinks, staring at the spot the man's ghost stood: accusing.

-0-

Days pass, and they don't hear anything about Stark either way - like the man fell off the face of the earth. It's not like Bucky isn't listening, either. He has slightly freer range around T'Challa's place than Steve does. And then Steve leaves and T'Challa disallows him back. Apparently he's gone and broken the others out of some kind of complex - a prison for the laws they'd broken in trying to act on Bucky's information. No one is stupid enough to put men like them in the same kind of prisons fit to hold normal people.

Bucky wonders if he should feel concerned or abandoned about any of this. He doesn't. T'Challa's people are polite and relatively generous. They disable the feedback from his severed arm and cap off the shorn wires with rubber. It still aches like an open wound, but it's bearable.

What isn't bearable is Bucky's own conscience, dressed to the nines and taking a stroll about the palace. Steve had said that Stark was still alive when they left, but the news says nothing and still Stark's Ghost haunts him, mingling unnoticed amount the specialist around him, almost more real to the room than Bucky himself feels. Like Bucky is the Ghost in this situation. Bucky blinks and there he stands at the shoulder of a woman studying what is left of Bucky's arm. He blinks again and Stark is gone.

The specialists wonder if sedation is necessary as Bucky's hand begins to shake. If the procedures and examinations are too stressful. Too triggering. He tells them no, and then puts his heavy head into his palms and waits for the weight to force the weakness out.

Stark's family is not the first that Bucky has eradicated from the face of the Earth. Sometimes people are difficult about complying. Sometimes they run, and nothing - the death of no one, no matter how precious they should be - will bring them to heel. They're fast. The more clever ones escape HYDRA for years at a time before HYDRA would loosen their leash on him enough for him to catch up.

There are a more than a dozen surnames that Bucky has wiped from the earth, never to be used again.

It's different this time, though. Different because Stark survived HYDRA by decades. Different because it wasn't even _HYDRA._ Different maybe because in another lifetime, in a different world, maybe he and Steve would have been friends of Howard's family. Howard had certainly liked Steve well enough -

(Hadn't he liked Steve? Hadn't he - it's just that Howard was seven lives ago, it feels like, and Bucky isn't sure he actually _remembers_ Howard outside of the sinister, silken whispers of his handlers: _look at you. You even killed your own friend._ And the Soldier had been so confused by the words because what friends would he have that they would need him to kill? It never made any sense. His face would wet and they would laugh, but it was never about recognizing anyone he'd killed as _dear to him._ )

Different, perhaps, because of all of Steve's team, Stark had seemed the hardest to kill, too clever, too lucky. At least until his heart caught up with him and dashed him against enemies he hated too much to be clever about. Had every right to hate. Bucky isn't so sure the right people walked away from it, even though he doesn't want to die. Doesn't want Steve to die. But if someone had to, then Bucky-

"Oh, come on," a familiar voices says, and the memory of cologne comes thick like an embrace. Spicy and expensive. "Don't tell me after all this time, something like you can feel _regret._ "

Bucky's stomach abruptly plunges, sick. He watches through tangled hair, just past the wrist of his trembling hand, as the fine weave pants come into view, too warm for the climate. They crinkle and Stark's face comes into view, crouching down beside Bucky and watching him with pitiless eyes, mouth tight and twisted into something half a grimace, half a sneer.

"If you could feel regret," Stark says, soft, reasonable, "it'd be so heavy it would kill you. And you don't look very dead to me."

Bucky flinches from the threatening barrel of his eyes as they pointedly glance over his huddled form. He wishes Stark were actually holding a gun, so he could maybe aim it at Bucky's heart or his throat. Something with a scatter shot that would rip through the soft flesh. Even he couldn't heal from _that._

"My mistake," Stark says dryly. "Weapons don't die, do they? They just degrade and break." He reaches out toward Bucky, and Bucky holds his breath, and Stark _flicks_ the damaged metal plates, just above the rubber safety cap T'Challa's people installed on it.

Bucky is too accustomed to pain to do more than clutch at it and clench his teeth until he tastes blood.

Stark leans in close, and Bucky's brain teases him with the sensation of warmth, the cologne gone hot and musky with heat. "But you know what," Stark says into his ear, and Bucky's scalp prickles, and his hair tickles his ear in mockery of how it would catch on Stark's beard. "You don't look very broken to me, either." Then comes the faint impression of calloused fingers wrapping around the bare expanse of the back of Bucky's neck. "So. Are you going to sit around gathering rust? Or are you going to do something about it?"

Bucky trembles and shakes. It's hardly the first time he's felt cornered and wounded, and something twisted and ugly rears up. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he scrapes out, frightened and resentful. Manages to twist his head to glower at Stark. If he had his arm - if Stark were _real_ -

"What, you gathering rust?" Stark asks, sitting back on his heels with a sort of lackadaisical, ambivalent wobble to his head and shoulders. "You tried that, killer. Vibranium doesn't rust, now does it? And you're two weeks too late for you being _dead_ to do me any good, aren't you?" He smiles. There's no teeth to it, but it looks like the worst kind of threat. "So, I ask you again: _what are you going to do to make up for what you've done?_ "

The breath in Bucky's throat and lungs quivers. Wets as fear and resentment turn to the same dogged helplessness that's plagued him all this time: he can't. He's never had a chance. A choice. He'd just killed, and killed, and killed, and beat men and women and snuffed out children's lives _so easily._ Everything he'd done had been so irreversible. He has so much to answer for.

"I can't," he says. He barely manages to give voice to the words. He wants to curl away from the accusing threat of Stark's eyes. "I can't," he says again, and it scrapes and tears at his throat. Salt and iron. "There's nothing I can do to make up for that."

The certainty of Stark's rage and retribution hangs over him, like every time he's ever defied his handlers, like every time one of his ghosts ask things of him that he can't provide. He can't unkill people. He couldn't hold his hand back from killing their families. Even now that he's escaped HYDRA's leash, cities and institutions are _still burning because of him._ He's a blight - a mar on the land - on any land he walks. He is fire and salt.

"Congratulations," Stark says, drier than the most bitter of poisons, "the first step to a solution is admitting you have a problem."

Bucky looks up, incredulous, but Stark is gone.

-0-

It's weeks more before Tony Stark makes his first public appearance, and by that time, Bucky has grown accustomed to the new ghost following him around. The fact that Stark isn't a ghost is - in turns relieving and terrifying. Stark is much more persistent and intrusive than most of Bucky's ghosts.

 _Most_ of them.

"Dunno why you're still hangin' around," five feet of bristling, asthmatic defensiveness mutters sullenly, bony fists clenched. "We both saw you. You're about as fine as can be, considering. Bucky didn't kill you so you have no cause to be here."

"Yeah and he didn't kill you, either, so I'm not sure what your logic is here," Stark says, deeply unimpressed. "What are you? Some kind of manifestation of Barnes' guilt?"

"Bucky's guilty the same way _you're_ dead," the ghost of Steve says venomously.

"Oh, that's cute," he says, then looks past Steve at Bucky. "He's cute. He's your sense of self-preservation? _Really?_ This guy?"

Steve seethes. Bucky could say that he thinks at one point, Steve was the only reason he bothered getting up in the morning. It's not entirely true - he thinks there was probably a mother. Younger siblings. But the impressions of them are vague and distant. Steve's the only thing about his past he really remembers, and even him only barely.

He doesn't say any of this, though - he pointedly ignores them both. He would, anyway, but given that he's currently sitting through the tests that T'Challa's people want to run on him, regarding the arm as no one has managed to figure out what to do about the _Words,_ it's more of a necessity than a preference. Bucky's crazy, not an idiot.

"I've done _just fine_ looking after Bucky before you showed up," Steve says darkly. Something about the tone give Bucky tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. He doesn't chase it. It never leads anywhere good.

"Have you," Stark says. "I mean, _have you really?_ Because things look like shit, honestly, and I mean - great job re-imprinting him with his pre-HYDRA self, there's no way _that_ could backfire. _Sure,_ Barnes is alive and all, but-" He turns his attention back to Bucky and looks him up and down. Grimaces a bit funny.

"He's still _Bucky,_ " Steve says stubbornly.

Stark turns back so sharply Bucky nearly expects to see him throw a punch. "I'm getting real sick of hearing that from you," he says venomously. "Bucky this and Bucky that. _Your Bucky_ destroyed lives. Destroyed _my_ life. If _only_ he'd actually killed me. If only _you'd_ actually killed me."

Bucky flinches. Stark hadn't looked good when he'd finally put on an appearance. Under the flash and glam of the expensive suits, the makeup and medicine and sharp trimmed hair - he'd had the look of something wild and hunted, cornered and vicious. Something sharp around the corners of a soft mouth, like a blade in a sheathe. Dark eyes filled with ghosts. Something beaten until it was unpredictable and _mean_ with it.

The people that had done that to Stark hadn't locked him into a basement to do it. Is it better or worse when the ones doing it smile to your face and pretend to be your friends? Bucky watches the coverage of the fallout and wonders. Bucky always stays and watches. Only half because he's trying to remember that despite everything, Stark's still up and walking about - not dead on the floor, left abandoned like trash. Not someone long gone. The other half is-

-0-

"I knew what I'd done to you," he says, struggling through his-chest-too-tight-to-breathe. "I never would have asked him to go behind your back. I never would have-"

"Still happened," Stark says, pitiless and cold, hands in his pockets and watching Bucky wheeze and struggle on the floor. "So what are you going to do about that?"

-0-

It's only a week after Stark's public reappearance that Bucky reaches the point at which he'll either break like a good weapon, or something worse. He asks to go back on ice, unable to trust himself or what he sees anymore. Steve hasn't made himself a murderer for Bucky's sake, and that's what matters in the end - because there is no changing the blood on his own hands. That will never go away.

T'Challa aquieces. It must be obvious that Bucky's situation is not improving no matter how smart the people working on Bucky are. He can't handle any more panic attacks the moment he loses a few minutes to rote activities. Can't handle the brutal back-and-forth that his two most persistent ghosts engage in if they're both present. It had taken so long, so much effort for Bucky to trust himself to living something like a normal life to start to trust it, back when he first fled burning DC for safer grounds.

But now, Bucky has been forced to accept the fact that despite his freedom, despite there being no one to perform maintenance on his conditioning, without freezing or going into the chair again - the Words still work on him perfectly, without a hitch. Easier to shake, perhaps, but the officers at that facility - and then Stark, and Natalia, and -

Until they figure out a way to deprogram him, he can't be trusted, by himself or anyone else.

So he goes back under cryo. T'Challa's machine isn't awful, not like HYDRA's, and a part of him wonders when and why he has it. It's different, but still a part of him trembles and shakes. Still, a part of him is glad for it.

The last thing he sees is Stark's face, reproachful and unimpressed.

He wakes up to Steve.

Bucky surprises himself with how much dread that causes him, and feels poorly about it for all of the thirty minutes they give him before he's informed that they don't have any more idea how to fix him than they did before - aliens have invaded, and they need him to fight.

Of course they do. Someone always needs Bucky to kill someone for them. Or something, in this case. Bucky knows it's different, it just doesn't feel much different, that's all. T'Challa's men fit him with an arm - just an arm, capable of wielding a gun, opening a door, but little else: a pale imitation of _Bucky's_ arm; the prosthetic of a normal man, hastily formatted to fit the socket where his shoulder once was.

They wake him up and attach a limb to him and arm him and tell him to fight. It's not the same, Bucky reminds himself… but he has to remind himself.

("Stark was right," Natalia says tonelessly to Steve, and Steve says, "I never said he wasn't." She looks at him. Her eyes say: _didn't you._ Didn't Steve, though? Or otherwise what was this all about? The implications are-)

It's a war all over again, and though the smells and the sounds are different in some ways, they're the same where it matters: blood and death and screaming and crying. Death always sounds the same, even if the enemy is different. It's a war, and it isn't an easy one - but it couldn't be - and yet; and yet gradually, Bucky comes to forgive his own part in it. Gradually, beaten, bloodied, exhausted: Steve's whole part in this 'Avengers' thing starts to seem a bit more rational to Bucky. Steve never met a fight he didn't want to have, sure, but the fighting isn't the important part of it. And then -

And then.

Bucky has seen the footage. If anyone were to step up to be the flashy hero of the day - of course it would be Tony Stark. The man only too clearly has a faulty sense of self-preservation. What they call a 'death-wish' where Bucky's from, swiftly follow by a bullet to the head.

Only this is Stark, so it takes stealing Thanos' power gauntlet to take him down.

And after that, it's a matter of math. When Stark collapses, worn through like the effort of wielding the gauntlet has drained him of everything vital, there is no one to catch him. His reckless endangerment of his own life is the only reason he got close enough to steal it in the first place. No one risks their life on Stark's level.

Bucky wishes they could get on it. He makes it to the fallen man's side first. Some kind of habit or instinct had driven him in Stark's wake, taking advantage of the openings his brassy recklessness created. It puts him in a unique position now, and something that feels innate, like something he's been doing for years but has no memory of, lands him at Stark's side. Debris bites into his knees, cuts through cloth, but it's only pain - trival. Stark isn't breathing and his heart isn't beating and _like hell will he have survived all of this to fall now and make his Ghost real,_ Bucky thinks.

He bends over and breathes into Stark's still body, puts his fist to Stark's ribs, and _presses._ He presses and presses, and presses. He presses until beneath his fist, there's a wet cracking, a wet pop: Stark's ribs break. And still, Bucky does not flinch, presses, compresses, tries to remind the stubborn asshole how a heart is supposed to beat. Doesn't flinch, and breathes into his lungs, grim, determined - maybe, if he were capable of it: hysteric.

There can be no more deaths today, and he can not allow Stark's Ghost to become a reality. He can't. If he does -

"This won't absolve you," self-same Ghost says behind him. "Saving him won't change anything. It doesn't bring back any of the people you killed, and it certainly doesn't change what you've done to _him._ "

"Thought you were supposed to be clever," Bucky bites out, cracking bones beneath his hand, and then he thinks something beneath empty flesh stirs. "This has nothing to do with _that._ "

The next one to make it to Stark's side is Thor, who Bucky doesn't know that well, or at all, but Thor says, "You may wish to move," and then his hand is dancing with _electricity._ He puts it to Stark's chest, one hand above, the other to Stark's side, and Stark's body jolts.

Bucky shoulders Thor out of the way and tucks his fingers into Stark's neck, feeling for the pulse he thinks he'd seen earlier. He holds his breath. His fingers feel like they should be shaking, but they're steady - too steady. Always steady under the worst kind of pressure no matter how Bucky feels like shattering. Thor hovers, waiting.

"He won't thank you," the Ghost says.

Thor seems to sense it first, his breath escaping him in a startled but relieved chuff. Beneath Bucky's bloodied hand, the same that broke Stark's ribs, a pulse comes, thready and weak but gaining speed and strength. He's already on his knees, but Bucky falls further as everything leaves him all at once. He falls back as Stark _breathes,_ shallow and shaky and uncertain - does not wake, but at least _lives._

The stupid, lucky, suicidal jackass lives to fight another day. Bucky has not allowed yet another name to be retired to the annals of history, never to walk the earth again.

That's enough. It's enough for him.

-0-

As a precaution, T'Challa takes all of them back to Wakanda while the world moves uncertainly in the wake of the invasion - while they're still capable of escaping. Bucky, Steve, Sam, Natalia - the whole team of rogue Avengers, though Barton, their sniper-archer, complains bitterly in the aftermath.

"Do you know how easy they would find it to disappear you _now?_ " Natalia asks him when he makes noises about wanting to stay with his family. Barton sneers, and then resentfully changes his mind and comes with them.

Bucky thinks he probably should have thought of that long before now.

They all lend their aid to Wakanda since they can offer aid nowhere else. The people don't entirely need it, and barely bring themselves to accept it, despite how badly their country had been targeted during the invasion. They haven't completely forgotten what came before, Bucky thinks.

And although nothing has really, truly changed - he still has no defense against the words, nor has Stark's Ghost left him - Bucky does not ask to go back into cryo, and for reasons known only to himself, T'Challa does not suggest it. For his part, Steve looks wary but hopeful, looking lighter and lighter every day that Bucky is up and about on his own.

"If you wanted to, he'd understand," the Ghost of Steve suggests, tentative - reluctant. Bucky doesn't look up from where he's working oil into the leather boots he's been provided. Steve is settled down next to him, dwarfed in the suit he wears, frail and thin and breakable. The dichotomy between him and the man he immortalizes gives Bucky a headache most days.

"Would he, though?" Stark wonders, his opinion clear in his voice, pretending preoccupation with the open window and what is happening outside it.

"For Bucky, he would," Steve's Ghost shoots back, sharp and challenging.

Stark's Ghost snorts. "For Bucky, sure," he says, shifting his weight like a boxer in the ring as he turns and looks at Bucky. Locks gazes with him, eyes gun-barrel dark. "If you _are_ Bucky. You are _Bucky_ , right?"

"Of course he is," Steve's Ghost says: no other option acceptable.

(" _My name's Bucky,_ " he'd told the Sokovian special agent so long ago, recoiling from the name _James._ James was what HYDRA called him. 'Bucky' was a name he hadn't heard from anyone but Steve and the Howlies, and he hates the sound of the name James, of _Yakov,_ of Yasha, _he doesn't want to be James anymore._ )

('Bucky' is the man that Steve Rogers turned against someone who'd considered himself a friend for. 'Bucky' is the name of the man that was used to destroy the Avengers from the ground up. The name of the man left behind to blame for all the Winter Soldier's sins. A memento of someone's friend who has long since drowned in the blood of innocents. Friends and family and strangers there at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He doesn't want to be Bucky either, really.)

-0-

Of all of them, Natalia is naturally the one that is not always around. She is frequently out and back, then closing herself off into meetings with T'Challa and with Steve. Bucky doesn't think for one moment she's truly giving him any space, and is later proved right three months after the end of the invasion when she corners him in an otherwise empty room - thankfully not while he's susceptible to being distracted by any of his ghosts. He's as in the present as he can be, considering, and doesn't trust that this was accidental. Not with Natalia.

She announces herself thus: "Stark's working on a pardon for you."

"A _what,_ " Bucky says, barely above reaching for a weapon.

She eyes him, cool, calm, aware. "A pardon," she repeats, as if that were what he's actually confused about. Her tone is cool and neutral, her eyes remote. "If I were you, I would take it."

"Would you really?" he asks, only he's not really asking. He hears the truth of it, but _why?_

She tilts her head, skirts her gaze to the side. "Stark's working on pardons for all of us, really," she says, instead of answering him. "T'Challa is keeping it quiet until we know what the vote will say, but." Her mouth curls, sardonic. "It's Stark. So the vote will be 'yes.'" She pushes away from the table and walks with the careful precision of someone dancing on razored blades.

It's just as well she does; Bucky smells the spice that forewarns of Stark's Ghost, and doesn't look around for him, not yet. Not with Natalia here. "And you trust him?" he says.

Natalia smiles. It's gentle and amused and raked over broken glass. "No," she says with an easy little shrug. "I don't trust anyone, but you know that." She glances at him, meaningful. Bucky would like to avoid her gaze, but that would be giving too much away. He trained many, many, _many_ killers over the many decades they had him.

"Then why do you think I should take the pardon?" he asks.

"Luckily for all of us, Stark considers retribution the vice of lesser men." She inhales and tosses her hair to look at him plainly, serious. "When he succeeds, it's likely that news of your pardon will be held back. He'll use it as leverage against Steve."

"Yes to both of those," Stark's Ghost says, strolling around from behind Bucky, eyeballing Natalia suspiciously. He cuts Bucky a sharp look. "It's more than either of you deserve."

Bucky says nothing to any of it. If Stark gets Bucky a pardon and decides to leverage it against Steve, they'll still owe him so much they'll only be able to smile and say 'please.'

Natalia observes him, then adds, "If Stark offers to build you something, take that, too."

"Why?" he can't help to ask - why should he take it, why would Stark even _consider -_

"Because if you can stand being a kept man, Stark keeps people very well," Natalia says with something like regret, and Bucky remembers suddenly that she had not taken Steve's side, not at first. That hadn't come until later, when she'd cut them loose, and longer still, when she'd turned up baring her teeth at Steve like she'd wanted little else but to stick a knife into his kidneys.

Loving Steve tends to make you do things you really would rather not. Bucky thinks he remembers that much, and if he doesn't, then he has certainly learned it since. You were either on Steve's side, or you were against him. There was never any room for compromise. Not with Steve.

"I can't ask that of him," Bucky says incredulously. "You know what I did to him."

She shrugs and does not argue semantics; she of all appreciates the futility of it. "Maybe he won't offer," she says. "But if he does, now you know what to do."

"And I'm supposed to believe that Stark would do _anything_ at all, ever, for the man that killed his parents and for Steve, who lied to him about it?" he says, too much teeth, too much emotion. When Natalia quirks her brow at him, Bucky shakes his head. "You weren't _there,_ " he says. "You didn't see him when he found out. When he realized Steve knew. What that meant."

Natalia meets his gaze directly, unflinching, and dryly says, "He didn't kill you."

"He tried," Bucky says.

Natalia studies him and then her mouth twists wide and wry under a long, slow blink. "Funny, you don't look dead to me. Stark is flashy, but he's efficient: he doesn't miss an opening. You're not dead, Barnes. Hence, you have an opening. If Stark gives it, you should take it." The wide, ugly twist of her mouth almost makes it as far as a smile. "Just some friendly advice from one professional to another."

Stark's Ghost scoffs, but Bucky's lip has peeled back into a snarl. "That's the kind of advice I don't need," he says, abruptly furious. Furious about the blood on his hands. Furious at the implication that _Stark held back,_ made worse by the fact that aspects of that fight suddenly make sense in retrospect. Furious that Natalia, who knows what he is, just as he knows what _she_ is, is suggesting taking advantage of Stark in any shape or form. Furious that even now, Steve's Ghost keeps saying _it wasn't your fault,_ while Stark's leans into his space and says: _go ahead little weapon, change hands._

Does Stark even know Russian? Somehow it's that detail that Bucky's brain snags on.

Natalia pulls back in on herself, polite, not a hair out of place, eyes demur and lowered. "It's advice, not an order," she says wryly, "you don't have to take it. Just be aware that while killing may be a vice for _lesser men,_ Stark sometimes acts exactly like the kind of man he is."

"You know, for someone who was comfortable being my kept woman, she sure doesn't think highly of me," Stark's Ghost says unpleasantly. He glances at Bucky with an ugly snarl to his mouth. "Why don't you come and take advantage of my endless good will, too?"

"I'll think about it," Bucky says.

He's lying.

-0-

He means to lie, anyway. It was a lie when he said it, and yet, Bucky finds himself thinking of little else. T'Challa tells them of the pardons, and just as Natalia said, Stark's message is that Steve needs to give something before Bucky's fate is assured. Stark seems to think that Steve signing the Accords will do the trick.

Steve gets the kind of look in his eye that every last nerve in Bucky's body identifies as dangerous, even if he doesn't remember half the reasons why.

"There have been enough secrets, I think," T'Challa says coolly when he announces all and sundry to the whole team, giving Steve and Bucky a speaking look. Lang and Wilson watch Steve closely. Barton's pretending ambivalence as if his opinion isn't known to all of them. He and Lang lost the most in following Steve.

Steve lets that sit for two seconds, and then declares with finality: "he's threatening Bucky to get to me."

The Sokovian witch stirs, but doesn't get out of her seat, watching Steve warily. She makes every last hair on the back of Bucky's neck stand on end. He doesn't know whether to shove her down while he looks for attackers or if he's supposed to stick a knife through her gut and rip open something vital.

"The Accords aren't going away, Steve," Natalia says, staring at him from across the table. She's chosen to sit on Steve's 'side' of the table, at his right hand. Bucky had taken the left. It's strategic on both of their parts, but Natalia is playing more fields than Bucky is. "If you want to help people 'anywhere,' then you have to sign."

Steve comes to his feet and Bucky just says: "Steve." Steve looks at him, and the set of his jaw and the tightness around his eyes make him look cornered and wild. Something in Bucky wants to wrap his arm around Steve's head, not to wrench it until it cracks, sickeningly, but just to leverage him down, to hit some kind of reset button or something. It's not entirely a kind feeling, but it doesn't feel cruel, either.

Steve blinks heavily and looks back to T'Challa. "What about Bucky?" he asks, and really means: _don't you still intend to protect him?_

Hasn't T'Challa already done enough to help Bucky? It's true that T'Challa wouldn't permit the others to stay so long as Bucky was in cryo, but since then - since the Invasion, he has. And they'd given Bucky an arm. It's not entirely a _good_ arm, not as good as the one that he'd had before, and it leaves him feeling off-balanced. It doesn't hurt as badly, but it's not even a third as useful. There have been people for Bucky to talk to, although he doesn't, entirely, no matter how gently they remind him that they're here to help him, and to help him, he needs to talk to them with honesty.

"I have worked extensively with Doctor Stark during this time," T'Challa says, smooth and reasonable. "He does not strike me as being deceptive or dishonest in this." The slant of his gaze nearly invites Steve to challenge his host's judge of character, but given Steve's actions toward T'Challa up until this point, Bucky wouldn't hold that against him. "I believe Doctor Stark mentioned several requirements for Mister Barnes' return to the States, pardon or no. Therapy, for one. Threat assessment. Mandatory testing for methods to undo what was done to him. He would not be allowed to leave the Compound-"

Steve opens his mouth, shoulders heaving, but he's effectively silenced by T'Challa's stare, the hand that T'Challa raises to the air toward him.

"That is not only for the safety of the citizens, Mr. Rogers," he says bluntly. "That is also for Mr. Barnes' safety. There will be people looking for retribution. Surely you do not think that all who believed in HYDRA's cause have been taken care of? My people have stopped several intruders who we believe were looking to recover Mr. Barnes for nefarious purposes."

A cold wash of adrenaline goes through Bucky, though he doesn't allow himself so much of a twitch of his lashes in response. He'd already been aware of that - had been before T'Challa had decided it pertinent to warn him of it. Steve pales, though, as if it's news to him. On his other side, Natalia doesn't look surprised, not like the rest of the team do. Barton sneers, but Barton sneers at everything these days. They're all equally guilty of having lead him astray, as far as he's concerned.

The Sokovian witch stirs uneasily, glancing first at Steve, and then at Barton. Neither one look at her.

"And you think Tony could do a better job protecting him," Steve says flatly.

"Hardly," T'Challa says with an unpleasantly pleasant expression on his face. "For many reasons, I can keep him better protected here in my country than Dr. Stark can in New York - but the protection I extended to Mr. Barnes was never meant to be permanent, and it has become clear that his situation is not being improved by being here."

"And you think being around _Stark_ will improve it?" Barton asks skeptically - with surprisingly little of the rancor that he normally has when speaking that name. "No offense, your Majesty, but wouldn't that be a little awkward? You know. Considering."

T'Challa doesn't look at Barton even once, though he answers, "Perhaps. The situation is not easy, nor is it simple. I do not, however, think that an accord is out of reach, given the men in question." T'Challa withdraws from the table slightly, his baring more regal than usual - so he's acting as the protector of his people, not as the 'friend' or 'host' to the exiled Avengers, Bucky notes.

"In the end," T'Challa says, "the decision lays with Mr. Barnes, regardless of any other decisions that might be made here today. And in the end, it is to Mr. Barnes that I am indebted." His eyes find Bucky for a thoughtful second before he looks to Steve. "And so, it will not be on your decisions that this opportunity rests. As I may have mentioned, Dr. Stark is not unreasonable. If Mr. Barnes wishes to accept the conditions of his pardon, I can certainly convey that to Dr. Stark, and I am equally certain that Dr. Stark will see his way to making that happen."

This is a little harder for Bucky to swallow - he can see Stark using him to bring Steve to heel. Stark had considered himself and Steve friends. What he might _do_ once Steve was brought to heel is less easy to figure out, but it's reasonable that he would. But- the idea that Stark might extend the pardon anyway, just because Bucky _wants to come home-_

(Something twists, abrupt and painful, in Bucky's chest. When was the last time he allowed himself to think of going _home?_ Was it the last time he allowed himself to think of himself as a person? Fifty - seventy - _eighty years ago?_ )

"You really think Stark would do that for me?" Bucky asks, and it comes out thick and twisted and painful, like a rusty gear grinding loose. "You really think I could just - _ask,_ and he'd do it? No other strings attached?"

T'Challa observes him thoughtfully for a moment. "I would not release you into Dr. Stark's care if I did not believe his intentions were honest," he says. "My honor would not allow it. But I'm afraid I cannot guess as to Dr. Stark's motivations on the matter. Why he has chosen to provide you with these opportunities are a mystery only known to the man himself."

"Bucky saved his life," Steve says. Not like it's an explanation, the way it might have been - but as if it's a talisman to ward against Stark's uncertain intentions.

"You shut up about that," snaps out of Bucky's mouth before he even registers the urge to speak. "Savin' a man's life isn't something you leverage against him, Steve. You know better than that."

It startles nearly everyone in the room, and even those who have been pretending ambivalence seem surprised and disconcerted. Barton sneers, unimpressed. Bucky's skin crawls under the weight of all the attention, but he holds firm. If he doesn't talk much, or that sharply, then surely it should show how serious he is about this.

Steve, for his part, only looks slightly surprised. "No," he agrees, "but it's proof you're not a killer."

"The hell do you think I did during the war?" Bucky asks, even though he can't really remember it himself. The smells, mostly. The screams, sometimes. Things that he's familiar with despite the fact that HYDRA hadn't fought anything as obvious as _that_ since those days anyway. A battlefront wasn't controlled enough for them to let the Asset out there. "I've been killing people for a long time, Steve."

"That's not the same."

"No, it's not," he agrees. "The people I killed after hadn't signed up for anything. They were innocent."

"It wasn't your fault," the Ghost of Steve says. "That wasn't your choice," Steve says.

"Guess that makes me chopped liver," Stark's Ghost cuts in. "Collateral damage. 'Whoops! Didn't mean to destroy your life while saving the world -' _oh wait._ You weren't saving the world at all, were you, Buck-a-boo?"

 _No one will thank you,_ his handlers said. _You will shape and save the world, but they won't see that._

"Steve," Bucky says, "I need you to stop worrying about me when it comes to this. I'm thinkin' about the people who ended up hurt because of something I was involved in. And maybe I didn't choose any of what happened of my own free will, but I was still a part of it. I gotta make amends for all of that - or I'm not ever gonna be able to put the Winter Soldier behind me."

It looks like someone's stuck a knife in Steve's heart. Bucky would know what that would look like. It's a helpless kind of a look. Something like despair. A dawning awareness that there's nothing to be done about what's happened going forward.

"I wasn't the only person the Winter Soldier happened to - neither of us are," he persists, more gently now. "And hiding is easy. I hid for years from what I'd done, but look at what happened because of that. Taking myself out of the situation only made things worse. Maybe it's time I took control of it. Started doin' something about that."

Steve's jaw firms, and because he's always looking for a fight, he says, "and you think that something should start with Stark."

Bucky arches his brows. "You know another victim of the Winter Soldier who might be willing to give me a chance?"

"Assuming he'll give you a chance," Steve says unkindly.

"Might be a better one than we gave him."

That shuts Steve up. Bucky doesn't properly remember any of this, but it's almost like riding a bike. The rhythm is familiar enough that he might not topple over and break something.

"Would you like me to express your wishes to Dr Stark, Mr. Barnes?" T'Challa asks patiently in the lull that follows.

It takes Bucky a moment to answer, the request a lot more daunting than just talking about it, or considering it. He thinks it would be easier to step in front of a firing squad. "I would," he says.

The atmosphere of the room shifts strangely. Gazes are met and looks are exchanged across the table, and Steve stands stock still in the midst of it, his breathing shallow but slow, strained. He looks around the room at the rest of the team and clenches his teeth.

"Right," he says tightly. "Anyone that feels the same, go ahead. Take the pardon. Sign the Accords, if you agree with them. I won't think differently of any of you. It's been an honor."

Stark's Ghost scoffs. "An honor, right," he says. "Like you and this lot are soldiers in the army."

His piece said, Steve nods to the room at general and - with a stiff, tight back - stalks from the room. Bucky vaguely feels the need to go after him, but he's not sure what he should do or say if he does - if it's what he really needs to do in the first place. He catches Natalia's eye and she gives him a commiserating look. A bit aways, Wilson shifts uncomfortably, looking exhausted and unhappy.

The door is barely closed behind him when Barton says, sharp, "these pardons are legit?"

T'Challa looks at him coolly. "Dr. Stark was laying the groundwork before Thanos attacked," he says. "Your actions during the invasion merely made it much easier to convince the appropriate people that pardoning you would be in their favor. Of course, reparations are still required for any and all actions during the course of the Avengers Schism. Most countries are prepared to accept working as an Avenger as the equivalent of 'community service,' so long as the Accords are respected. Many areas are still devastated from the attack. Clean up will take decades."

"And Stark's doing his part?" Barton asks bitingly.

T'Challa tilts his head. "For what part would he be making reparations for, Mr. Barton?" he inquires. "Tony Stark acted on behalf of the law in this. There was, of course, the not inconsiderable issue of Siberia, but that has long since been addressed. Of course, Dr. Stark's charities are making large efforts to aid in relief and reconstruction, both at home and world-wide."

Barton snorts. It's transparently on his face that he thinks: _but not Stark himself._ But he doesn't chew over the issue long. Bucky sees his answer before he's given it - probably has been seeing it since Barton came to Wakanda after the invasion to begin with. "Fine," he says, "I'll take it. As long as I can see my family."

T'Challa inclines his head.

After that, the rest of them quickly fall in line. The last holdout is the Sokovian witch, who waffles and looks at T'Challa with wide doe-eyes. "What does this mean for me?" she wants to know. "They still hate me. They are frightened. And I am not a US citizen. Will its government still shield me? Will _Stark?_ "

"Have you given him reason not to?" T'Challa inquires, which is a reasonable thing to say - to point out the lunacy of the question.

Maximoff takes him seriously, though, looking at him with wide, troubled eyes, her mouth parted.

It sharpens T'Challa's attention. He is a warrior - the Black Panther. Bucky's not sure what all that means, but it clearly means _something,_ as he's rarely resembled a predator more. "I would not dishonor myself by delivering an enemy to an ally's door," he says, smooth as smoke, watching her. "Have you given reason for Dr. Stark to withhold his goodwill?"

She licks her lips, nervous, and does not answer.

T'Challa watches her for some moments longer, still and patient, before he is finally satisfied with what he observes. "You situation is most difficult," he admits, "but you were named among the Avengers, and so the talks have included you as such. Dr. Stark has… generously described the schism as a matter of confusion over leadership."

"And that worked?" Natalia wonders without rancor. When T'Challa looks to her, she expands: "Stark was often clear with us that Steve was the leader of the Avengers."

"Perhaps," T'Challa says. "Fortunately for you, this was not made clear worldwide. And the world is more pleased with an internationally recognized retired CEO than they are with a man named 'Captain America,' who wears what many consider a symbol of interference and heavy handedness." He glances at both Sam and Bucky in turn, adding, "I have no opinion on the United States foreign policy myself. Our country has been spared many complications in that fashion. I am aware however, that it is equally as celebrated as it is reviled. A more neutral option is perhaps wiser."

"And _Stark's_ a neutral option?" Barton asks, sneering.

"Stark is a familiar option, and many are aware of his company's policies of late, now that he has stopped producing weapons of war," T'Challa says easily. "And given his actions during the Schism, he is the logical choice."

"This is sounding better all the time," he says bitterly.

It isn't new behavior, but Bucky finds himself more bothered by it than before - well, before T'Challa promised him that he only had to _ask_ and the man whose parents he'd killed, who he'd fought against with desperate strength and fear - for a way back home and it would be provided. Bucky doesn't really feel anything about it yet and probably won't until it actually happens, but - he wants, suddenly, to remind Barton that Stark doesn't owe them anything. Bucky has heard that all this time, Stark has predicted Thanos' arrival - but Thanos has arrived, and been thwarted, and defeated. He has no further use for the Avengers. No reason to extend them _anything._

"You know," Wilson says, low and private while the others are distracted with their personal strings to the pardons, "I don't disagree, but you should probably hold back on tearin' Steve down in front of the team."

"Yeah?" Bucky glances at Wilson, takes in the slant of his brow and the tension tucked up between his shoulder blades. "Maybe the team needs to remember he's a person capable of fucking up," he says. "Would have thought all this - 'civil war' … 'schism' mess would have made that obvious."

Wilson stares daggers at him. "And you can talk that over with him in private, Barnes, instead of undermining him in front of the boys."

And _oh,_ Bucky thinks, staring at Wilson. It's been too long since then. It's part of what they stole from Bucky when they first began to electrocute his brain to fry everything _Before_ out. With his handlers there had always been a strict hierarchy, but amongst themselves they constantly battled and fought for control, for prestige, for getting their accomplishments acknowledged. Bucky - the Asset never had any questions about whose orders he was to follow, but being the Soldier's handler was not an irreproachable position.

If one of his team knew better than the Handler, and the Handler did not listen to them, then the Handler was removed and returned to training, and a new Handler assigned.

"Is that how Steve ran things?" Bucky asks, staring at Wilson. "Like the Avengers were paramilitary? Because that's not what it looked like from where HYDRA was standing."

Wilson's eyes harden the way they always do when Bucky's situation comes up - he hasn't forgotten that Bucky was with HYDRA, what he did for HYDRA, not like the rest of them pretend to. It's almost enough to make Bucky like him. Almost. "Yeah, why don't you tell me how HYDRA saw us," he says.

Behind Bucky's shoulder, Steve's Ghost bristles, frustrated and thwarted by the fact that Wilson can't see him. Stark's Ghost huffs with amusement, light and taunting as he says, "are you starting to miss HYDRA yet? At least with them, promotion was based on ability and skill and not just who liked whom."

Bucky talks over him - (because he does, the damnable thing is _he does,_ because things were simpler then: don't step out of line, take your licks, follow orders, _don't worry about it)_ \- explaining, blunt and plain: "the Avengers were never a priority for HYDRA because they acted like a bunch of kids in a secret clubhouse, tilting at windmills and neglecting key assets over a popularity contest. They were never seen as an actual threat."

"Yeah?" Wilson says, sharp but a little brittle, "and who was left standing?"

Bucky looks at him, blinking slow. "Yeah," he says, mouth pulled open to teeth. "Who _was_ left standing?"

Because it certainly wasn't Steve's little team of misfit criminals, exiled from their homes and internationally hunted unless the man they made their enemy deigns to extend a hand in friendship. Wasn't the man with teethmarks on his hand still extending it, either.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Stark's Ghost says bitterly. "The only one left standing at the end is the one who is the root of all this blood and conflict."

"Bucky hasn't stood since that day he fell off that train," Steve's Ghost snaps. But is that true? Is it?

"Really? Because the way it's looking, he's the one coming out smelling like roses," Stark says. " _I lost everything._ "

"Bucky and I lost everything long before _you._ "

Bucky can't stand listening to it, and gets to his feet and leaves - and miracle of all miracles, the sound of their bickering falls behind him as he runs away. (He's always been running away, is the kicker of it.

 _Run and hide, little boy, frightened of the harsh truths of the world. It was all stolen from you and now it's all coming back too easy, so:_ **_run_ ** _._ )

-0-

The process for the pardons is long and arduous. Stark is as good as T'Challa's word - or maybe T'Challa argued in Bucky's favor, he doesn't know - because T'Challa tells him that Stark is working on his pardon long before Steve agrees to accept his own.

Well. The pardon is signed, regardless - Steve's pardon before the rest of them, but Steve is the one that makes no plans to return States-side. Barton returns first on Natalia's promise that it isn't a trap, swiftly followed by Lang. There are apparently private hearings, but the media frenzy is louder than whatever legal shenanigans are happening in the background. Natalia's is handled quieter, likely because Bucky thinks her betrayal was only known internally.

Wilson lingers while the weird, alien (robotic?) man known only as The Vision comes to speak quietly to the Sokovian witch, in quiet tones and looking sober.

"It's difficult," she says - explains, excuses. "I spent so long being terrified of him, hating him. It's difficult to remember that things aren't as I believed for so long."

(She once - _only once_ \- had approached Bucky in the early days, saying: _HYDRA can make you believe anything._

 _Really?_ He'd asked. _And how long were you in their chair? How many times? Did you forget your own name? Who you were and everyone you knew before?_

 _I lost sight of who I was,_ she'd said momentarily.

 _And do you know now?_ He'd asked, and she'd had no answer.

Bucky doesn't know who he is now, either, but whoever it is isn't a man that can tell her that working for HYDRA, even unknowing, even out of terrified desperation, is okay. That her experience was anything at all like his own. She'll deal with the guilt of going to them of her own power or she won't.)

She cries a great many tears while The Vision lingers nearby, looking awkward with his hands tucked behind his back. Eventually they leave, together but with a space between them that seems unbreachable. Wilson continues to linger, talking quietly with Steve himself on occasion, his hand a reassuring weight on Steve's shoulder. Steve looks stubborn and desolate in turns, his jaw tight when he looks at Bucky. Bucky's not sure what he's looking for or how he's somehow failed Steve the way that expression suggests.

"He perhaps feels that you've chosen Tony Stark over him," T'Challa suggests. Bucky didn't mean to invite comment on it, other than T'Challa had taken him aside and informed him that Stark would like Steve to sign the Accords, still. As if Bucky is supposed to convince Steve of _anything._

"I haven't," Bucky says. He doesn't say that his strange compulsion to look after Steve, to fight Steve's battles in whatever form they come in and _win them_ by any means necessary makes his skin crawl. It's some kind of programming. Maybe different than the kind that he got at HYDRA'S hands, but three times as insistent - even more insidious. It's not like Steve's asking him to _hurt_ anyone, and so why fight it?

_He only wants to chose for himself for once, goddammit._

"Unfortunately the way that we feel does not bend easily to logic," T'Challa says. "To Mr. Rogers, _why_ you have chosen to accept Dr. Stark's offer perhaps means less than that you _have_ , and have chosen to leave even if that means leaving him behind. To him, it must seem like abandonment." He glances at Bucky and adds: "not that I am saying you should not accept Dr. Stark's offer. Only that this may be the source of your friend's mood of late."

 _Are_ they friends? Everyone tells him so, from Steve himself to T'Challa, now. What does that even mean, that Steve's his friend? Steve feels like constant, persistent tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. He must have meant something to Bucky, something big. He was the only one to have ever managed to break through the numb blankness of the Winter Soldier.

Or does he seem to mean something to Bucky because of that? Because Steve Rogers was the only one to ever have had what it takes to _survive_ the Winter Soldier, is the thing. Everyone else was always so much easier to kill. _They_ hadn't had the Serum. Even the other Soldiers hadn't managed to withstand Bucky, once he was given permission to use full force against them. He remembers _Natalia_ better than he does Steve.

Maybe. He's not able to produce facts he didn't know he knows about Natalia on command. Steve's Ghost is damningly silent on the matter.

"I'm not choosing anyone over anyone else," Bucky says. "I'm doing this because I have to. I can't keep running away from my problems."

"Have you tried explaining this to him?" T'Challa asks.

"Thought I had." Hadn't he? Maybe Steve's the one that just isn't listening. Something about that feels familiar, maybe, or maybe his mind is just playing tricks on him. Maybe he is running away from his problems by avoiding Steve like this, after all. It's just so hard to hear himself when Steve's around.

Later, when he arrives in the States, will he continue this pattern and avoid Stark the same as Steve? The way things are looking, it seems unpleasantly likely.

And then Steve, after Wilson finally leaves, changes his mind on a dime, and with his jaw firm and his back painfully straight, agrees to sign the Accords.

It's definitely not the posture of a man trying to make amends, Bucky thinks.

"What the hell do you think you're doin'?" Bucky asks while Steve packs.

Steve hasn't looked at him so far, but Bucky can see him working up to it. "I'm going to make sure we're all on the same page as far as moving forward," he says.

"You lied to a man who thought you were his friend for years, Steve," Bucky says. It's not like HYDRA was the greatest study for functional human relationships, but Bucky knows how he would feel about that. He knows how he _feels_ about the fact that Steve kept his trap shut when he knew.

"You think I don't know that?" Steve snaps, his bridled temper getting the better of him. He coils, threat and violence that never quite manifests, breathing deep to swallow it back down into the pit of his stomach; it's somehow an uncomfortably familiar sight. "Tony was my friend, too."

Is this what 'friend' means, Bucky wonders, watching him. Steve hasn't managed to find a fight to take up and so he fights a war inside himself. That'll probably kill him if he doesn't find another way of accomplishing it. Bucky scratches the stubble along his jaw with the flat of his thumbnail, looking away, uncomfortable with the sight of it - finds himself staring at the Ghost of Stark, all six feet of him in bespoke blue wool, eyes like the glaring threat of gun-barrels, beard twisted by the sneer he wears.

"So what's the difference between a friend and an enemy with this guy, anyway?" the Ghost wonders, shooting Bucky a dark, hateful look. "How long before he's withholding information from you, because he thinks he knows better? Oh," he says, light and lilting, swaying in place to make up for the hands jammed into his pockets, his feet planted to the earth stubbornly, "-but telling you the truth will hurt his feelings, so doesn't that make it all better?"

"That's not fair," Bucky says without meaning to, and Stark gives him such a withering look that Bucky has to duck his head away, a blow he can flinch from but can't avoid.

Steve jerks the zipper shut, and then turns and faces him like a firing squad. "What do you mean?" he asks flatly.

Bucky can't admit he wasn't even responding to what Steve said, so he shakes his head and folds his arms tightly across his chest. "So you liked the guy," he says, gaze skirting around the room, the empty spots once taken up with odds and ends that Steve had collected during his stay here. "Just not enough to be honest with him about his parents' murder."

"That's-" Steve barks, and then shoves his hand through his hair so hard and fast for a moment Bucky thinks he's going to rip a whole handful out. He's past due for a trim unless he's taking fashion tips from _Bucky_ of all people.

"But when you found out," Bucky observes, "they either told you or heavily implied that I'd done it. And by that time, you knew who I was. And so you couldn't tell him, because-" and eyes narrowed, he reads it off Steve's tense frame, and the memories of what _did_ happen when Stark found out, "you were afraid of what he'd do. You thought he'd…" What? He'd what? Kill Bucky in cold blood? Except Steve _liked_ the guy, and Steve didn't seem like the sort that could resolve liking someone with them being a murderer, for all that Natalia went on and on about how Stark could have killed them and hadn't.

Done what? Figured out the programming and used it against Bucky? It's a repulsive thought, but Steve also doesn't know how the programming _works_ \- just how extensive it is, how much _a part of him_ that it is now. He knows about the Words, now, true, but knowing there's _a_ method to controlling Bucky like a mindless puppet isn't the end of it. It was a one in a million chance that Zemo had figured out the method and where to obtain it, likely sourced from the close dealings Sokovia had with HYDRA to begin with. He would have known how their organization worked.

So Steve had held the information back - why? Bucky studies him, and while he's looking at Steve, he takes in the room, the packed bag, the timing of Steve's decision and what he'd said when Bucky asked him about it.

And Bucky says, "Steve. Tell me you didn't create something worse for Stark to find out so you could play a human shield for me."

" _No!_ " Steve protests, too bright, and too loud. He hears it the same way Bucky does: too quick, too desperate, too defensive. Something starts to dawn, terrible and cold, and Steve's chest heaves with troubled breath. "I don't think so," he then amends, and it sounds like it hurts him to say it. His expression starts to crumple, and he himself looks at his packed bag. "I don't know," he says, brow a tangled mess, eyes big and confused as he looks back to Bucky in distress.

Stark's Ghost makes some kind of noise, shallow and short and twisted, fury and disgust. Bucky wonders where he gets all that emotion when he's just a figment of his own imagination, and Bucky himself doesn't know what to say or do about this, himself. It's not as if he can tell Steve it's okay, because it's not. That Steve hadn't done it consciously, if that _is_ what he'd done, is at least something, although it doesn't excuse or make up for it.

"Steve," Bucky says at last, and looks away from both him and his own guilty conscious, rubbing his hand over the tired lines of his face, "I told you some time back I wasn't sure I was worth all of this - but I can definitely say I don't _want_ to be worth it. I don't want people to get hurt on my behalf."

"I didn't mean for Stark to get hurt," Steve says. "That wasn't what I wanted. I didn't tell him _because_ I knew it'd upset him."

And that's probably true enough, based on what Bucky's seen of him; if Steve wants to hurt someone, he'll do it with his hands, first. That doesn't mean it's all of it, though. Doesn't even make it the largest part of his reasons, either, to be honest. "You sure that was it and not that the most likely suspect had your friend's face?" Bucky asks, feeling weary to his bones in a way only his worst days can make him.

No matter how spooked Steve is by the possibilities of what he's done, though, this is apparently an unmovable line; for him, there's no room for second guessing on this, and it shows in the way his expression steels and his shoulders level out. "Don't ask me to be sorry I was protecting you, Bucky," he says.

There's a disturbing level of threat there, in the coiled tension of his back, the quiet snickt of the words in his mouth. Bucky has proven to be untrustworthy with his own safety, and Steve is willing to take the necessary measures.

Might be a bit novel to be haunted by Ghosts that he himself didn't put there, Bucky thinks, feeling something thick and unpleasant curl in between his heart and his gut. "No," Bucky agrees, "I'll just be sorry enough for both of us. It isn't the first time I've been used to hurt someone. Probably won't be the last."

"Come on, Buck," Steve says as Bucky pushes away from the doorway, like he's being unfair or difficult.

"Steve," he says, and he's just - the awful weight is weighing in, growing heavier with every breath to the point it's getting difficult to draw another. He wonders if that's what disappointment feels like. He wonders if it shows, the way Steve looks at him and goes still, his mouth parting and brows buckling. Decades of suppressing doubt and regret and every miniscule scrap of pleasant emotion he felt is a difficult habit to kick, but maybe Steve just knows him that well. "I'm not so sure I want to remember more about us if it's going to be like this," he says.

Steve silently reels, face going slack. That's another knife to the heart, he thinks, and as disappointed as he is, he feels grief for that, too.

"I owe you a lot," Bucky admits, looking away. "Everything. I don't think I ever would have broken free myself, not with the way things were going. DC was the Soldier's last hurrah, I think. Or it was meant to be. But after everything, I don't want to be involved in things that cause people pain anymore. Can you understand that, Steve? Is any of this making any sense to you?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, tense, and he wipes his hand across his mouth and says, "yeah." It comes out rough, dragged over gravel and broken glass, and he clears his throat. "Yeah," Steve repeats. "That makes sense."

Does it really, Bucky wonders. He doesn't really properly _know_ Steve, not like he once might have, must have, but he's come to know him well enough that he has the impression that Steve doesn't know how not to fight. That fighting might not have come naturally to him, but that he's been at it for so many years that trying to do otherwise is almost alien and unnatural. Bucky can sympathize with that.

"There's not really anything I can do to fix what I've done - what I've been involved with," he corrects, because still and always and even now, Steve wants to argue just who is at fault here. "But I want to make amends for it." He chances looking at Steve and studies the remote expression there, like a dozen men given orders they despise and can't disobey. Steve swallows dry enough to make his throat click, and looks up from the middle distance to meet Bucky's gaze with the same grim determination it must have taken to lie to Stark for years.

"If this thing with Stark is a trap," Bucky says, "there isn't much I can do about that. This -" he pauses, stumbles, wants to say _me_ and yet can't quite, "the Soldier," he settles, "doesn't take traps sitting down. Even if it takes a decade, I can get away again. There's honestly not much Stark can do to me that hasn't been done."

Wants, a little bit, to say: _I'm not afraid of him._ It would be a lie, and he can't find the motivation to speak it. He is afraid of Stark. Has been afraid of Stark since the memories of dead men and women started gaining context. He'd been armed with Stark weapons - good, reliable weapons, he misses them - and even after he'd left HYDRA, Stark Industries had continued to haunt his steps everywhere. It's inescapable.

Sometimes Bucky thinks he remembers Howard Stark, but the Howard in his memories is so much like the son that he's never entirely sure it's not just his sieve of a brain trying to fill in the blanks. Uncertainty and regret had seen him in tears multiple times over the last few years.

(And yet what was it Stark had said, fresh from watching Bucky murder his parents? _He killed my mom,_ Stark had said. If Bucky had known her at all, he thinks that would have been enough to bring her back to life, if only inside his own head. It had always been enough to briefly bring the children back, anyway.)

"I don't care," Steve says, thick and painful, like it's being ripped out of him, fingernails and teeth and eyes from their sockets. "I won't let them do that to you."

"Yeah, that worked out great for everyone, didn't it?" Bucky says. "You and your team were stranded out in the middle of nowhere with no resources or backing when the aliens Stark's been warning you about for years invaded. And now we're going back home only because that man made it possible."

"The pardons would have happened without Stark," Steve says, unflinching.

"Wish I could have your confidence, Steve," Bucky says, looking away. "I've been used to dismantle too many governments by taking out one vital linchpin too many times to say the same. You only gotta make an example of one man before the others fall in line."

He opens his mouth, and then he pauses, and then he says, "Stark wouldn't do that." It lacks the certainty with which he'd said the pardons were inevitable.

"Yeah? You seem pretty sure that Stark's a great guy, Steve," Bucky says, tired, "So why'd things have to go the way they did?"

"Stark already committed himself to the Accords," Steve says, grim and a bit desperate. "Once he starts believing something, he's not exactly easy to convince otherwise. I didn't want to put him in the position of having to choose between the Accords and helping us."

"Right," Bucky says.

"You don't understand," Steve says. "You didn't see what he was like - what led to Ultron being created."

He nods. Steve is right about that. Bucky doesn't know anything at all about Stark, really, except what he sounds like when asking why a man who he considered his friend has turned his back, and worse: what it sounds like when he's been struck to the quick in a way that no armor in the world can prevent.

"Whatever is between the two of you is none of my business, Steve," he says, "but that works the other way around, too. If I'm gonna put all of this behind me - if _we're_ gonna put it all behind us, it can't happen on your terms or mine. It has to be up to Stark. Surrenderin' doesn't count if you're still trying to make threats. You know better than that."

"I really don't," he says, jaw out, defiant. "That's not what this is. This isn't a surrender, Bucky. You going into this acting like it is ain't right."

"Like what he did to me was right?" Stark's Ghost says bitterly, and Bucky grimaces, reaching up to rub at his eyes, his head. His fingers tangle in his hair for a long, tested moment, like he might try mutilating himself just to deal with it. Except it's never helped before, and so it probably won't now, either.

"Either your let me and Stark work this out on our own," he says, "or you admit to my face that you don't trust either of us."

Steve's mouth falls open. "It's not like that," he denies.

Shaking his head, he says, "I don't blame you for not trustin' me, Steve. I don't think you should. I don't trust myself, honestly." He tries to smile about it, to make it into a joke, because what kind of person doesn't even have their own free will? No kind, obviously. It's not Steve's fault he's not ready to accept that. It took Bucky a long time to figure it out himself. "But can't we try doin' this my way? I don't think your way's gonna work on Stark. Not anymore."

Steve struggles with that, with wanting to argue with him, or maybe punch him in the face. Bucky won't let him if it comes to that, and maybe Steve knows it, too, because his hands never quite make it to fists. "I don't think you can charm your way out of this one, Buck," he says.

As if he could. As if he'd even try. Even if he wanted to, he doesn't think it's something possible for him, not anymore - he doesn't remember the trick of it: how to do it. It's like knowing how the set up of a joke goes, but forgetting the flourishes that sell it, and when he gets to the punchline, he can only remember the one that goes to some other joke entirely. It's a fine sand slipping through his grasping fingers, threatening to explode into a blinding, choking dust if he just breathes wrong.

"Probably not," he allows; he's stuck too many knives in Steve already this evening, no need to stick more. "I plan to go through with it regardless." He looks at Steve, measuring him between slow blinks. "You gonna let me do that?"

And Steve, though he clearly hates every second of it, acquiesces, and says: "Yeah."

Wool rustles as Stark passes behind Bucky, left to right, restless and furious. "God, watch him hate that," he scoffs, glaring with gun-barrel eyes. "Giving you the smallest bit of space is like pulling teeth. He'd wrap you up in a swaddling cloth if he could."

Bucky doesn't look at him, doesn't so much as blink. "Thanks," he says, because at least Steve is willing to _pretend_ to listen to him.

Steve nods wordlessly, and then after an awkward moment, says, "I should finish packing." He doesn't quite look at Bucky, which is wrong. It's all wrong. Bucky still doesn't know how to deal with that. What to do about the way something itches at him to fix it. Like his handlers going off script. Like what happened afterwards when he didn't respond appropriately.

His fingertips briefly ache to scratch all his crawling skin until it's slick. But that never fixes anything.

"You know," Stark adds, turning those accusing eyes on him as Steve turns to leave, "you talk a good game, but can you put your money where your mouth is? Do you really think 'sorry' is going to make all of this-" he says, waving his hand to indicate: Bucky, Steve, T'Challa's home, and lastly himself - "turn out okay?"

No, of course not. Of course Bucky has no real expectation that anything will ever be 'okay' about what the soldier did. He has no real expectation that he'll ever be forgiven for it. There isn't a way of making it up to the ruined families left behind, of undoing or giving back to them.

But running away is easy. Selfish. And it hadn't fixed anything, so going forward like this is the only other option Bucky sees left to him. Starting with Stark, who at least seems willing to rip the claws from his hands and the fangs from his mouth. No matter what happens, so long as Stark is honest about it, so long as it's not just to rip what pathetic little is left of Bucky's ability to choose from his hands, he'll only be able to smile and say _please_ and _thank you._

None of this will ever be 'okay,' but maybe someday, it'll be behind him.

-0-

When they come for Bucky, it's grim, humorless agents armed to the teeth, as if that could ever save them if Bucky were to be triggered, if Bucky were less than earnest about this. Them and the War Machine, on his own two feet. The glimmering light that once decorated his chest covered in cold steel.

So Stark learns. Evolves. Bucky barely remembers going after the power source of his armor, too full of fear and desperation, but he's reminded suddenly by the lack of the weak spot on the War Machine's chest.

These tense, frightened, angry men and women stare him down, and armor humming a quiet threat, Rhodes says: "Do you surrender?" and Bucky says: "Yes."

They lock his arms and legs in restraints. It seems to relax the agents, but War Machine doesn't relax. Almost seems angry at his quiet compliance. Bucky is familiar with this kind of reaction and holds still, still, still. Doesn't test the restraints he know will buckle and break the moment he puts any kind of effort into it, and wonders. Stark learns. He'd have some kind of idea how strong Bucky is. Is this a test? Is it? For what? How can Bucky pass it?

Until he can figure that out, he complies.

"I understand the need to assuage the people's fears," T'Challa says, nearly neutral. "But there are no civilians here to see Mister Barnes confined in chains."

"Yeah?" Rhodes says. "And you know for a fact that he's safe? That nothing's going to happen to trigger him, and he won't kill every person on the plane?"

T'Challa tilts his head, because of course he can't. None of them can. Not yet. Maybe not ever. "It seems unlikely," he objects gently.

"And you want us to risk these men's' lives on that," Rhodes says, gesturing at the agents. "We're not superhuman, your Majesty, with all due respect. And I've seen what he can do to armor like mine." They seem to take one another's measure for a long moment, and Rhodes adds, "Nothing is going to happen to him. Tony's seen to that. You see, he knows a thing or two about transporting dangerous, highly desirable weaponry."

T'Challa looks at Bucky. He seems to be thinking the same thing that Bucky is - that being escorted by agents in restraints, War Machine in company or not, seems like a large step down to the box they'd used to bring him in after the bombing. Bucky isn't sure which he prefers - he hadn't had a chance to test the box, whether it would have been escapable or not. If he hadn't, would he prefer it now?

Is this a test? It must be.

"On my honor," T'Challa says, "I promised Mister Barnes safety. I would not like it if harm were to come to him by releasing him into your care."

The armor is silent for a moment, almost drawing on for too long. "No offense, Your Majesty, but I don't really care about your honor," Rhodes says at last, the modulator transforming his grim tone into something dire and forbidding. "I promised to keep someone safe, too. I'm not going to mess that up again."

It's then that Bucky realizes that Stark is Rhodes' Bucky - or no, but yes. Yes, he realizes, just as Steve put his shield through Stark's power source, Rhodes would just as easily put a bullet through Bucky's head. Bucky would have to fight something like that - dying is unfortunately not an option for Bucky, whether he likes it or not. Instinct and training both will take over before it can happen.

"I know how important this is to Tony," Rhodes continues, "which is the only reason why I'm not going to escort the Winter Soldier to a secure holding facility that's properly equipped to handle the situation when he snaps and tries to kill everyone to escape."

T'Challa studies the War Machine for another long moment, still and watchful, like something ancient and dangerous. Measuring, Bucky thinks, the responsibility he took on against Rhodes' desire to protect Stark. The whole room seems to hold its breath.

Bucky doesn't bother. He has surrendered. If Rhodes tries to put him in a secure facility, he'll give Stark one week to live up to his word. The flimsy prosthetic that hangs from his shoulder won't be much help, but Bucky doesn't actually need it. He can rip it from the old HYDRA-built socket and make better use of it. It's more valuable to him in his base components than as a limb.

"I trust that you would not make a liar of your friend, Mister Rhodes," T'Challa says at last, subsiding. "Doctor Stark does seem to value the worth of it."

"Yeah, he does," Rhodes agrees, "for better or worse. The Winter Soldier is our problem now."

"So he is." T'Challa studies the team, stern armor for a moment longer before turning his attention to Bucky. He still seems dissatisfied with the restraints, but doesn't linger on the issue; they're a polite fiction that at most puts the agents at ease. Perhaps they'll be less likely to shoot Bucky for sneezing with them on. "Mister Barnes," he says politely. "My people will be in touch."

After a moment, Bucky nods: message received. T'Challa has gone above and beyond what Bucky thinks he should have to make up for targeting him over the falsified bombings, in his opinion - already had just in getting him out of Siberia, let alone the cryo, the arm, and hosting both Bucky and the team while all the politics have gone on. Bucky doesn't foresee himself calling for T'Challa's aid no matter what happens at the end of this flight.

"Thanks, again," he says, meager, insufficient acknowledgement for all that's been done for his sake.

T'Challa is gracious as ever in his wordless acceptance.

The plane is one of Stark's - not the fancy jet that Steve stole at the airport, but something plain and inconspicuous - or is meant to be. It's conspicuous to Bucky in its effort to appear plain, with a dull, uninspired logo on the side. It has no windows. Bucky is seated in the center of it's mass, surrounded by agents well outside of arm's reach, and the War Machine, which sits across from him and pins him with that cold blue stare.

It's like something out of his nightmares. Bucky can't decide if it would be worse for blood to come gushing out of the seams of the steel mask, rather than red and gold.

It's a long flight. Rhodes is a determined man, and he manages several hours of it sitting across from Bucky in his armor, never moving or speaking - at least that Bucky can hear. But Bucky has spent decades waiting. Sitting without so much as blinking, barely breathing - that's his default state. He remains in it, never closing his eyes, sharply aware of the agents shifting and breathing around him. The War Machine armor hums. Bucky's ears are sharp, but nothing gives Rhodes away as a human being inside it.

Eventually the agents talk. Inconsequential things. They don't talk about Stark or the Avengers or Bucky. He thinks that should be the bare minimum expected of anyone transporting a dangerous fugitive, but given the truly pathetic measures they've taken so far, he's tempted to be impressed. HYDRA took more strident measures, and most of the time he'd thought they were _his._

The serum prevents his limbs from locking up or his muscles from fatiguing from holding the same positions for hours on end. The agents stay limber on a rotating patrol, leaving the section of the plane where Bucky is kept and presumably retiring to a lounge of some sort, or perhaps the pilot's cabin. Even War Machine eventually gets up and leaves for a while. Presumably while they're well over the ocean.

But Bucky doesn't. He barely blinks until they finally land, and the agents gather, and finally indicate that he is to get to his feet. When he does, they stir uneasily, and something stirs - confused, murky memories.

His heart unexpectedly rabbits, a bright wash of adrenaline. The sudden certainty that he's about to break, to attack and to escape, crushes down around his ears, crowds up his gut and slams through his lungs. Why didn't they affix better restraints? It won't even take twisting his wrist to snap the metal, and these men -

"Don't," War Machine commands, and Bucky stares at the cold blue eyes, the bright metal face plates. It looks like his own fist. He waits for blood to start pouring out. "Get ahold of yourself, soldier," the Machine barks, and then it's not blood, but the face plates folding back. Rhodes stares him down, grim and urgent. "Don't," he says again, a firm command from a man accustomed to giving orders and having them followed promptly.

Some part of Bucky responses to that. Maybe several parts. His ears roar, but not so loud he can't hear Rhodes clearly.

"Listen to me," Rhodes says. "You made it this far. Do not fuck this up for everyone. Okay? You are less than thirty feet from the right path. Do not step off it. Not now. Too much is riding on this."

"You'd put a bullet in me if you could," Bucky says, and it comes out belligerent. He doesn't know why. Any reasonable person would, and Rhodes has more reason than most. Not nearly as much as others.

Rhodes stares him down for a second and then says, "yeah, I would," blunt and almost spiteful. "I've seen some of it. No one comes back sane from that. You're a time bomb, Barnes. You and Rogers both. I think that's about the kindest thing we can do for you."

The bright cold of the adrenaline slowly begins to thaw, his breath coming slightly easier. "Stark disagrees," he guesses, because if that were the final say on the matter, then it would never have come to a pardon, and certainly not if all Bucky did was ask for it.

Rhodes scoffs. "Tony thinks you should be nuttier than a PayDay bar," he says. Measures Bucky with dark eyes. "But he also thinks you act too rationally for that to be the whole story. Not so sure I agree with him."

And yet the weight, the tightness, the _fullness_ inside him preventing him from breathing easy continues to relax. His skin stops tingling. The world slowly blurs into a less intense focus. "Okay," he says at last, somewhat at a loss.

Rhodes continues to watch him suspiciously for a moment before he finally turns his attention to the agents. He doesn't redeploy the helmet. The men and women around Bucky seem a little on edge, still, as they escort him from the plane, but not nearly as much as they had been before Rhodes spoke to him.

And ten meters from where the plane is stopped, inside the enclosed hanger they pulled into, stands Tony Stark.

He looks like he's just finished a round of pacing, a distracted, scattered energy to the loose crook of his elbows, the deliberate angle of his heel to the ground. He's dressed in some kind of unfamiliar cut of suit, a pitch, relentless black. He's wearing glasses, colored a dark, rich red - not rosey and bright, but like wine - like arterial blood. It's a far cry from the warm amber of before.

A certainty trembles through Bucky, that he'll break his bindings, and in the process rip the prosthetic off. That he or Stark or both can't exist in the same room without something explosive and irreversible occurring. Something fit to ruin not just the world, but worlds of worlds, and everything in them.

It's impossible for Stark not to know that they're there, that _Bucky_ is here, and fast approaching - and yet he stands as if unconcerned, one foot balanced on its heel while he studies it as if contemplating how the glossy deep red fits with the suit. It isn't until Bucky is only five meters distant that he finally looks up, and then his face spasms strangely, like he's smelled something rotten, or maybe like an aborted snarl of teeth and intent. This close, Bucky can see his eyes behind the dark lenses, and they're just like Bucky remembers from Siberia. Doll eyes, some might say. Shark eyes, the prickling hair on the back of Bucky's neck suggests.

(He is well acquainted with men and women with the eyes of predators: cold, calculating, empty. Stark's eyes are similar, but - no, he decides. No one who came by those kinds of eyes honestly could have looked at Bucky and Steve the way Stark had. Not over a mother decades dead.)

Loose limbs, loose head like a marionette on strings, but Stark's torso is kept carefully straight and stiff; he still carries the hallmark of Bucky's hands on him, favoring ribs that must still be on the mend. Something in Bucky reacts to that - not quite guilt, not quite responsibility. Those eyes, eerily blank, rake over Bucky and then dart to the agents around him.

"Really," he says, flat and sharp as any blade Bucky has maintained. "We're putting POWs in handcuffs now?"

"This one, we do," Rhodes says without hesitation.

Stark looks at him, then back at the restraints. The second assessment is just as swift but more thorough, and Bucky watches him reach precisely the same conclusion that T'Challa and he himself had. Stark pulls the glasses off his face and levels a speaking look at Rhodes.

Stark is -

Bucky settles into an uneasy stop, still far out of arm's reach of Stark, but much closer than he's ever been before without the Iron Man armor in the way. Some kind of awful, panicky thought is pushing its way through - that the eyes and some of Stark's more superficial mannerisms are the only things he's remembered correctly about Stark. That his crippled brain concocted an entire Ghost out of thin air that didn't even have the decency to properly memorialize the man that inspired it.

In Siberia, wearing the armor - and then thereafter in Bucky's dark and troubled dreams - Stark had towered over him, threatening, accusing, dying-bleeding-dead. A cold, deliberate rage, and calculated actions. A relentless crashing wall of metal and light, a knight come to slay the dragon in the lair of its birth. That's what Bucky remembers, mostly, of a man he last met nearly two years ago.

Bucky should have remembered just how faulty his memory tends to be.

Stark is no towering juggernaut out of his suit. Stark isn't even in the same weight-class as Bucky, a head shorter with a wiry build better suited for jabs and fancy feet work than prolong sessions of taking a fist to the face. Not that he should be anywhere near a ring, not with those ribs, not with the transparent nerve damage to his left hand, not with the silver he's reluctantly allowing to come into his hair. The set to his jaw that Stark has, facing Bucky unarmored and mostly unarmed, suggests that none of that would stop him. This is the man who stole a gauntlet not meant for human hands with sheer moxie, no plan but pure spite and defiance, and probably certain that it would mean his death. This is a man frightened and furious with it. 

He'd wondered what it was about Stark that Steve liked so much when he didn't trust the man an inch. _Oh,_ he thinks now.

_Oh, no._

Stark is shaping up to be the craziest asshole that Bucky's has ever had the displeasure to know. He gives _Bucky_ a run for his money, and Bucky has been hallucinating dead people for something like seven years now. Something awful-not-awful is settling inside Bucky's chest, somewhere between his ribs, his lungs and his heart. It inhibits his breathing. Not entirely unpleasantly.

Stark pivots on his heel, staring accusingly at the agents. "Can we get those things off him, for crying out loud?" He demands, terse, a fine tremble of hysteria running through his voice. "Preferably before anyone sees him like that and blows a gasket? And by _someone,_ I obviously mean Rogers. What are those even made of? Steel? Aluminum? Please tell me you at least have _some_ vibranium mixed in there. Of course you don't. Those are not the super soldier restraints I designed. You're all useless to me."

Stark dismisses them all with that one despairing, exhausted sentence, slipping his glasses back on his face and turning his back. The agents scramble. The one that moves to unlock the restraints around Bucky's wrists and the ones hobbling him at his ankles isn't the same one that locked them on.

"Come on," Rhodes says to Bucky, still in his armor, still without the helmet. "Welcome party's over."

"That was the welcome party?" Bucky asks, a little incredulously.

Rhodes' expression suggests that he doesn't like Bucky nearly enough to tolerate jokes from him. It wasn't even a joke. That wasn't much of a welcoming party - one man who hates Bucky's guts and has just unceremoniously yanked the rug out from under his feet.

If Stark's Ghost is nothing like him, then who has been haunting him all these months?

-0-

Things aren't nice or easy, not that Bucky had thought for even once second that it would be. He was right to worry that face-to-face with Stark, he'd choose to run away. It's easy to say that Bucky freezes up and keeps his mouth shut around Stark because Stark looks at him like he's been driven into a corner and is ready to engage in any kind of madhat schemes necessary to make it out alive. But in the end, how should he try to apologize? And what would he be apologizing for?

Of course he would never have killed Howard and Maria Stark of his own accord - at least, he doesn't think so. He remembers the serum that Howard made, and he remembers what it did, too. He _thinks_ he wouldn't have killed anyone over it - but, too, he finds killing people a lot easier than talking to them these days. Vaguely remembers that maybe once he was better at the talking part of it. Would that Bucky have found another way?

It hardly matters. That Bucky doesn't exist anymore, snuffed out so long ago that he himself barely remembers that man ever existing. Vague impressions that he once did. If Steve says ' _do you remember,_ ' then Bucky thinks he does. He thinks he does. Or does he simply know human nature that the rest of his knowledge fills it all in from the facts he has? He can't tell, and the men and women working with him and Stark's hallucination machine can't tell either.

"Memory is mutable," the lead technician, Tamera Bennett, tell him. She's soft and sympathetic as the scene they're trying to pull from Bucky's brain continues to glitch in-and-out-and-in. "Usually the retro-framing device is used on memories that are firm, or ironclad - to change them and make them into something different. Eventually, the retro-framed scene becomes more real than the memory, which allows the user to emotionally distance themselves from trauma. For you, it doesn't work as well because your memories haven't crystallized - or rather, either the damage done through electroshock, or the training you inadvertently received through the 'treatments,' prevents them from becoming so. You could see it as your brain having retro-framed them organically, rather than manually."

"So what does that mean for me?" he asks, a heaviness in the pit of his stomach.

To her credit, she doesn't stumble over her own dismay long; the obvious sympathy she feels makes Bucky's skin crawl, though not unpleasantly. Not entirely. "It means we may have to devise an entirely new method of removing the triggers," she says, then in a rush, helplessly, "the human mind is an amazing thing, Mister Barnes. Yours took whatever avenue it must in order to preserve itself - even though that meant ingraining the triggers deep into your psyche. At this point, removing them might cause more harm than good."

Bucky thinks he's supposed to feel something about that, but other than that awful feeling in his stomach, he feels nothing at all. "So I'll always be the Winter Soldier," he says. His eyelids feel heavy when he blinks, the blackness behind them a momentary blessing.

Specialist Bennett has little to say in response.

If he can't be fixed, then Bucky isn't sure why he's avoiding Stark anymore - except that Stark seems to be avoiding him in equal measure. It's not as though he is surprised or resentful of it, and anyway, Stark is avoiding all of them. Bucky's not sure why he's bothering to stay at the Compound at all, except perhaps to keep an eye on him. On them. They _are_ still criminals, and the United States is tied up in trying to deal with the world-wide repercussions of what was done abroad - a pardon issued by the US government is not a global pardon.

But Stark is rarely to be seen, despite his presence on base. Bucky mostly stays aware of his actions through the internet coverage - what little of that which can be trusted - and Natalia herself, who continues to play intermediary no matter how little she likes it. But he _is_ still in the Compound, regularly, and Bucky has gained nothing by continuing to run away and avoid trying to make reparations for what he's done.

Of course, catching up to a man with an AI programmed all throughout the building that loves him and can warn him of Bucky's whereabouts is easier decided than done.

-0-

Everything takes time, and if there is one thing that Bucky has in spades, it's time, and the resolve to wait things out. His psyche fractures until he grows accustomed to the feeling and stops trying to fit the jagged edges together. He goes through one, two, three therapists, and finally the fourth is honest in her desire to help him - only, no, that's not quite how it is. Most of them were honest, earnest, in their desire to help him. It's just that it takes time for Stark to locate a therapist whose methods work with the way Bucky's brain works now.

"Rather than thinking of it as 'removing the triggers,'" Specialist Bennett says reasonably, "we'd like to try retraining your response to the triggers."

"You mean keeping the Soldier," Bucky says, and wonders at the fact that he feels nothing about this, too. But after all, he and the Soldier are the same person, aren't they? Their memories are one. It was his hands, his reasoning, his skills put to use - the Words just removed the context, usually. Made it possible to put a bullet through friend and enemy alike without hesitation.

"In a manner of speaking," she says. "What we'd like to do is put the leash in _your_ hands, rather than at the hands of whomever reverts you to that state."

"Is that safe?" he wonders, and then: "is Stark okay with that?"

The Bennett blinks at him. "Mister Barnes," she says, drawing a little straighter, "no one has granted Mister Stark guardianship of you, nor has anyone granted him power of attorney. He has no say in your treatments, regardless of him providing the use of his resources."

Bucky blinks at her. He's not sure he knows what any of that means, really - HYDRA was a bit lax on teaching him legal terms, after all - but he takes it to mean that legally, Stark has no power over him. He doesn't for one second think that it wouldn't have been incredibly easy for Stark to claim every legal power over him, except apparently Stark has labeled him a prisoner of war, and is doing his best besides not to upset Steve.

Feeling her point made, Bennett relaxes. "As for whether or not it's _safe,_ " she says delicately, "... it may not be. Your previous… _'training'_ was done under duress, in extremely traumatic conditions. There's every chance that attempting this will be psychologically straining, or even damaging for you."

"I mean," Bucky says, "would it be safe for everyone else? If - if the Soldier - if I don't - if he tries to escape. He won't hesitate to kill to accomplish it."

If possible, her expression softens further. "Don't worry about that, Mister Barnes," she says firmly. "We aren't HYDRA. The safety of the technicians involved is of the utmost concern. Doctor Stark has signed off on us using any means necessary to rehabilitate you."

Well. They'd clearly taken steps to deal with the Hulk, Bucky reasons. The Soldier is much more clever than that - that's what makes him so dangerous - but so is Stark. And he owes it to the man to at least try.

-0-

Not even for one instant had Bucky thought that meeting Tony Stark face-to-face would excise the man's Ghost, especially once he's realized just how little they resemble one another. In the end, that's less of a problem than the other Ghosts that come thick as the retraining process gets underway. Stark's Ghost seems to imitate his real counterparts distaste for crowds in that these days, he only shows up when Bucky's alone.

"How many times is this?" Stark's Ghost wonders, pacing him. "I'm not sure how you expect to make anything right with anyone when you can't even remember who you are, most of the time."

Through solid, bitter determination, really, he thinks. The memories are still taking shape, lose and fluffy and insubstantial as cotton candy. It keeps threatening to rain. The only thing preventing them from melting is the growing certainty that Bucky is a real person and not a cover identity and he is not being tested in his ability to make it back to the nearest base.

What is he trying to make right again? And with whom? He thinks the Ghost with him has something to do with it.

"You security is for shit," he says, certain of that much, even if he's not sure why he thinks this bases' security - not an enemy base, nothing he broke into in the first place although he's having to break back into it now - is the responsibility of the Ghost with him. "I shouldn't be able to defeat state-of-art security on a superhero training facility with no one the wiser."

Right. Right. 'Superhero.' He's not sure where the word comes from, but it brings to mind several faces, several dossiers, and finally he recognizes the man walking with him, remembers how little it matches the face in that dossier. Incorrect information. Someone should dispose of the agent responsible for it. Information that incorrect would lead to mission failure.

Only it doesn't matter, because he's gone rogue. Has he gone rogue?

"How has HYDRA not found me and killed me, yet?" he wonders.

"They've already been decimated, genius," the Ghost beside him says. "Their cover was blown. You and I know that it's not the last we've heard of them - they'll rebrand themselves and reform again - but for now, you're on the side of the angels. Although not for long. Remember FRIDAY? Your favorite formless voice? Yeah. Your ass is toast."

He - _Bucky_ \- freezes for a moment. It's not as if he's forgotten about FRIDAY. If anything, FRIDAY's omnipresence has been something of a relief. He hasn't been completely alone for as long as he remembers, unless it was while he was in cryo and didn't require a handler. Before, it had been the anonymous crowds of the town he was living in. Now, it's FRIDAY, always present but never expecting anything of him.

"FRIDAY wouldn't tattle," Bucky says, but he doesn't _know_ that. This isn't the first time that he's left and come back. If FRIDAY were going to inform anyone, then surely he'd already have been thrown in chains? "I think she likes me."

If FRIDAY is listening, she offers no comment.

"Well," the Ghost says dryly, "you do have so much in common. With a few key words said just right, you can't avoid following direct orders."

He flinches before he can help it, only to realize that the statement doesn't grate as much as he'd expected. "'m half AI myself," he says as he turns the corner into one of the living areas. He immediately regrets it.

"Really?" Stark says, sharp and hostile, "I know we call it 'programming,' but you're taking the analogy a little far."

Bucky stares. If he'd wondered before over the existence of 'Bucky,' Bucky comes into sharp clarity. Stark isn't the kind of person to be fooled by some kind of cover story, at least not for long. And the resemblance, superficial as it is, between him and the Ghost at Bucky's side only lends more credence to 'Bucky' being real.

(Although, what is real? Everyone agrees that his Ghosts are not, and yet-)

Across the living area, in socks and a hoodie with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hair cropped almost too short to properly brush, the real Stark stands stockstill, eyeing Bucky like a wild animal driven into a corner and prepared take down its attacker by any means necessary. The severe dichotomy between him and the Ghost, six feet of blue woolen suit in amber glasses with his black hair styled into a swoop, is enough to make Bucky wonder for a bewildered moment what kind of nightmare he's having.

He almost gives into the urge to ask FRIDAY what the chances are of him running into Stark directly after forgetting that 'Bucky' is a real person.

He's quiet long enough that Stark's tension finally vibrates him out of the standoff. "Well," he says, "fascinating conversation. Absolutely stimulating. Well done. You'll be reintegrating back into 'civilized' society in no time. You're certainly bloodthirsty enough. FRIDAY."

"Yeah, boss?" the AI answers immediately.

"Make sure our friendly neighborhood trash monster gets to his next therapy session without getting lost."

"My pleasure, boss."

Stark aims one last jagged look at Bucky before visibly disregarding his existence, turning a back tight with tension on Bucky and stalking from the room. It doesn't look anything at all like running away, even though that's pretty much what he's doing - it looks like a threat or a challenge. Defiance. Bucky feels no need to tangle with it in either case, remaining frozen in place like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The living room feels strangely hollow and abandoned with just himself in it - but at least Bucky feels more like he can breathe freely again.

"Wow, that really was an A-plus effort," the Ghost says dryly. "Why did you think it was a good idea to impose on Tony Stark again? Oh. That's right. _You wanted to make peace with what you'd done._ You're making a lot of headway with that."

And well, he is right about that. All Bucky had managed to do was stare at Stark like some kind of mute lunatic.

"I'm working in it," he says. It's the only defense he has, as weak as that is.

"Work harder?" The Ghost suggests.

It isn't as though Bucky doesn't already spend plenty of time glowering at nothing much in particular, so he doesn't feel too awkward doing it now. Might as well make the whole crazy thing work in his favor every now and then.

-0-

It doesn't precisely get _easier,_ co-existing with Stark and his Ghost. He sees Stark more after that, and the Ghost is unrelenting about the claims that Bucky made months ago. They must be making progress with his retraining, or maybe it's just his therapist. He finally manages to apologize for killing Maria Stark. For all that Stark has gone through because of Bucky Barnes. He does it more than once.

Stark's reactions vary every time - a coin toss as to whether he'll immediately leave the room, or give Bucky the most withering look Bucky's ever seen on a human being. It feels like Bucky should shrivel away to nothing from the force of it, but it only fills him with some kind of awful, grim certainty.

( _There's Mister Stark's part in this to consider as well,_ his therapist says delicately. _For him, you are a trauma. I'm not sure his method of coping with that trauma is necessarily healthy, but I think for your own sake - for the sake of your conscious - that you should tread carefully in your attempts to gain closure._

Yes, Bucky thinks so, too, but it's hard for him to understand just what Stark wants from him - what will help Stark put this to rest. Surely he wants that? What other reason would he have in bringing Bucky home? What does he want in return for that, for all the things he's done, the steps he's taken? Bucky's increasingly finding himself willing to give just about anything.

A bullet in Bucky's head would prove difficult. He doesn't want to die, at least not as much as he wants to resolve this. He doubts that would be enough. He knows what that desire looks like, and that's not it, either.

He remembers Natalia saying: _you don't look dead to me._ )

Things seem to gain a certain kind of equilibrium for a few months. He doesn't have _so many_ breaks from reality, stops forgetting who Bucky is as often. Still needs time to himself, away from the team, alone but for FRIDAY and the Ghosts. When he's the Soldier, he forgets less often that he doesn't want to hurt anyone, gradually comes to identify people outside of Handler and Enemy categories - starts being able to recognize _Civilian_ and _Ally._

So that is, naturally, when FRIDAY rouses him out of a nap with, "Mister Barnes, the Boss would like to see you in his lab."

The words shouldn't make any sense to him given how confusing the message they impart is, but Bucky understands immediately and incidentally has three major escape routes mapped before he finishes sitting up from his bed.

"Stark wants me in his lab?" he echoes, confused.

"I know, I was surprised, too," FRIDAY says. "Or - well. Not as surprised as you, of course."

Bucky takes that to mean that she knows _why_ Stark wants him down in the lab. He doesn't expect her to indicate one way or another whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Stark is her first priority. Bucky has never doubted or begrudged her that, no matter how much comfort he's taken in her presence.

That Bucky gets up and begins the journey down to the lower levels of the Compound, where Stark's lab is, is not a result of his feelings about the summons. Bucky has more or less decided that as T'Challa said, Stark is honest in his determination to fix Bucky. What Stark intends to do with him after the fact is more in question - but he's also fairly secure that whatever his final plan is, this isn't the time for it.

He's never been down to this part of the Compound. He'd asked FRIDAY about it, but when she simply said that he wasn't authorized in any of the rooms below, he'd left it at that. It's the upper reaches of the Compound that he finds more necessary to scout out. Now that he's been summoned, FRIDAY delivers him him easily and without complaint.

The lab is -

Bucky hates to take his eyes off Stark for even an instant, the man standing propped against a table, tension in his back and thighs, the shallow, slow breaths, the dark stare like gun-barrels. He does anyway. It's filled with light and color and information endlessly, endlessly streaming, scrolling, calculating. There are tables cluttered with projects, metal and wires and tools, left abandoned mid-build.

The one next to Stark, like a place of honor, has his old arm propped on it with countless wires pouring out of the burnt and melted end that used to fit Bucky's bicep; they feed up into some kind of machine set next to the table. Above it is a diagram in blood red light, barely recognizable as Bucky's entire arm, disassembled. That as much as Stark is why Bucky finds it difficult to turn his attention there. That's his _limb_ on the table, and not for the first time, Bucky hears the prosthetic spasm at his left side.

"FRIDAY said you wanted to see me?" Bucky says, and his voice comes unexpectedly rough and twisted. He barely holds back the urge to cough, blinking at Stark.

Stark blinks back, and then finally turns the threat of his gaze away. "You understand," he says stiffly to the corner of the room, crossing his arms low across his chest, "that if your therapist determines you need a new arm, I become responsible for providing that arm."

A cold sort of feeling washes through Bucky: adrenaline. Terror, probably, if he can still feel anything like that, skin prickling and heart thumping in his chest. "No," he blurts out. Doesn't know what terrifies him more: another arm, or _Stark_ installing it. "No. No, I never - I didn't ask for that, I didn't say-"

Stark paces, speaking over him. "I've taken some scans of the one you have now, of course - there's pathetic little in the way of security measures, but T'Challa's people tell me it's a _civilian_ prosthetic, so that explains _that._ Of course, I've spent some time studying the one that's in my possession-" He gestures to Bucky's arm, now blocked from sight by his own body. "And frankly, the fact that they hacked in civilian tech is a damned shame. It's an insult to the socket still attached to you. It's certainly meant to support something about five times more complex than the model you have now. Would have thought they'd upgrade it before releasing you to yours truly, but apparently I'm just - awful at predicting people."

There's that knife's edge, sheathed in a soft mouth and decorated by the precise cut of his beard; the sharp points of teeth snarling in something barely making an effort to masquerade as a smile. That hate, that violence - intimately familiar: a beaten thing cornered and unpredictable. HYDRA had taken the extra steps to take even that from Bucky, for which he finds himself glad at odd times over these last few years. If he still had that - if his wounds still wept so freely, instead of being cauterized thoroughly - he never would have managed to walk among human beings without being a danger to them.

Bucky hadn't asked T'Challa for a better arm because he had already done so much for Bucky. He hadn't asked for one from Stark, either, despite the way the prosthetic throws him endlessly off balance, feels alien, the way he thinks about tearing it free of the socket only every day since he's gotten it. He looks past Stark, at the array of wires and the edges of his own limb there on the table, and the way Stark's hologram breaks it down to the smallest bolt.

The thought terrifies him. Let someone else near it? That's insanity. That's all his worst nightmares come back to life - but Bucky's been living a nightmare for so long now that he knows he can survive it. He knows it will come to an end, eventually. Probably.

He thinks of what Natalia said to him.

"You think you can match it?" he says. His mouth feels strangely numb. There's a dull roar in his ears, and he blinks eyes slightly unfocused and looks down at Stark, who stares back, frozen, fear and fury in equal measure. _You don't look dead to me,_ Natalia said, and: _if he offers to build you something, take it._

Does this count, Bucky wonders. He thinks it might. He doesn't know Stark well enough to accurately guess.

"You want me to build you a new arm," Stark says tonelessly. His eyes pin to Bucky's, hold him to the spot like bolts driven into his bones for several long moments, then dart only for a second to his left side where the prosthetic hangs limply from the socket.

It's a good arm. A fine arm. It's not shaped to Bucky's body and it has no strength to match his right hand and it's nothing but constant, dull, white noise. A steady screech of feedback to his nerves.

Bucky swallows, and his throat clicks dry with terror. He can't bring himself to blink. "You studied it," he points out.

"I can send my notes to Wakanda," Stark says, too neutrally. Bucky can't get a read on him. He doesn't know what answer Stark wants. He looks back to the display.

"I'll take that one back," he says. "It's the one they built for me."

Stark hisses like an angry cat. " _That one,_ " he says so sharply that Bucky nearly feels hot blood leaking from the soft parts of him, "is getting melted down where it will never touch another person ever again."

That's Stark's right, Bucky thinks, but it carves into him and it feels like Stark's spilled out his guts onto his feet. Like Bucky only needs to reach down to his waist and he'll find them all tangled there, hot and slippery. He's too well trained to try, of course, or indicate that the thought even crossed his mind -

Or he thought. He thought he was so well trained, but Stark abruptly twists, hands grasping in a helpless fury as he turns away and stalks around the table, putting the display and the arm between them. " _Fine,_ " he snarls. "Fine. How about this." He nearly slams his palms against the table, catching himself at the last instant to set them down gently and stare through the bloodied diagram of light at Bucky. "You want an arm, I'll give you an arm. _This_ arm." He gestures to Bucky's arm, displayed like spoils of war. "In spirit, if nothing else. I'm going to melt this thing down, and then I'll make you a _better_ arm. A clean one. We'll tweak the weight. It's too heavy for even someone hopped up on serum to want to carry around. I'll keep the scraps and we'll make you - I dunno. Something. That good enough for you, tin can?"

Bucky is still too shaken from the thought of his arm being destroyed that he can only numbly say: "Okay."

"Okay," Stark echoes with an incredulous bite to his voice, and he narrows his eyes at Bucky. It feels like he's taken aim for a moment, but - "Okay?" Stark says again, and he sounds slightly baffled.

"I'll take the new arm," Bucky says. Why is this the sticking point? Isn't this what Stark was offering all along? Except Stark suddenly seems to lose some of the fury and fire, eyeballing Bucky like he's suddenly turned into someone else, or become something less dangerous. His mouth slants, bitter but uncertain.

"Okay," Stark repeats for the third time, pulling back from the table and tucking his arms tight against his ribs, shoulders a fraction of an inch too high. "Fine. A new arm. I can do that." He looks down at Bucky's arm on the table in front of him like he's never really seen it before, uneasily shifting his weight from one foot to the other - glances back up at Bucky with eyes that look nothing like the barrels of guns.

( _Oh,_ Bucky thinks again, and wonders if he should put Natalia's face into the mud for so carelessly handing away the keys to someone's heart like that.)

-0-

With keys so dishonestly given and carelessly used, it doesn't go easy. Bucky doesn't try to make it easy. Stark has given him far too much for Bucky to take kindly to buying his regard like that. Keys or no, Stark treats him like the unwelcome intruder he is, and Bucky takes it as his due. He may have ruined any chance of real resolution or closure acting on Natalia's advice.

It isn't as if Bucky can easily blame her; Natalia still doesn't know how to relate human beings honestly, no matter how hard she keeps trying. To be fair, neither does Bucky, not really, for all that he can recognize when and where it goes wrong after the fact.

Still, he comes down to Stark's lab and since Stark is hellbent on having as much of Bucky's input on the new arm as possible, they spend terse, mostly silent hours together. Stark still occasionally stares threats at him, mouth flat around the blade beaten into him by friendly hands. Mostly he pretends that Bucky doesn't exist.

Rhodes comes across them once and only the once, the diagram of the new arm on display in front of them, and in one glance immediately knows what they're up to. "Are you insane?" he demands.

Stark gives a wordless, ambivalent answer.

"Last time my therapist checked," Bucky says only to be on the receiving end of a look that speaks volumes of how little Rhodes appreciates his humor, still.

It's too much to ask that Stark ever be considered a _friend_ to Bucky, between their history and now the arm, but it begins to feel less like they're fundamentally incompatible. Eventually they agree on a design, eventually it's realized with the help of the specialists in Wakanda that hacked the prosthetic into the socket of Bucky's arm. It locks into place and the weight is _different_ , but it's so much like his own arm that Bucky feels torn open and shaky and _grateful._ Stark looks incredibly uncomfortable and promptly begins to ignore him from across the lab.

It's met with mixed reaction among the team. Steve looks too much like he thinks Stark is weaponizing Bucky. Wilson, of all people, looks the most like he understands, but he's probably seen plenty of soldiers with missing limbs get something suitable attached to the ruins of what's left behind.

Natalia arches her brow and gives Bucky a look that says she sees straight through him. If he still didn't resent her advice, he might be tempted to ask her for a little clarity.

It takes only days for Bucky to adjust to the lighter arm, and then his therapist is proven correct when after that: things start to come easier. Most things come easier. It's somehow worse, now, to hear the Words, but once Bucky is the Soldier, he's less violent. The Soldier is never frightened, not like Bucky; but with a functional, powerful arm, he's less guarded, more confident and calm.

(As the Soldier, he flexes the new arm, judges the weight, the strength, and listens to it calibrate. It doesn't sound like his arm, but it _feels_ like it. Adjusts and shifts more smoothly. A very dangerous weapon he's been given, the Soldier thinks, and says nothing as he confidently relabels Stark: _Valuable Ally. Priority. Protect._ )

When they're confident that no matter how Bucky is triggered, the Soldier retains control of himself, they start allowing him to work on missions - not armed, of course. Bucky doesn't begrudge that. But he's allowed to come along, to find vantage points and mark targets.

"I know I'm not really doing anything," Bucky admits. "Stark has all the eyes on the sky that we need, and Barton has the angles that Stark doesn't. But - I dunno. It helps. It helps me, I mean."

"Well, you're doing good work. Mister Stark and Mister Barton also being on watch frees you up to look out for the civilians, right?" Dr. Julian asks. "You saved twenty-three lives just this last mission."

"Yeah," he says, the admission coming easy as the truth, "but one of them would have noticed."

"Maybe," she allows. "Or maybe with you keeping an eye out for civilians, you freed the two of them to focus on the threats. What did your teammates say?"

Bucky remembers Steve, bright and pleased. The congratulatory hand on his shoulder. Steve had made the biggest, most obvious response of it, but Bucky had a read on the others: they, too, approved. Wilson, who had spoken loudest against letting Bucky out on missions, only nodded and told him 'good job out there.' And - "Stark said saving civilians was the quickest way to get the public on my side," he says dryly.

She cocks her head. "Do you feel like he was belittling your actions?"

"Who knows with Stark?" he huffs. Stark seesaws from one polarity to the other: barely even hunches his shoulders when Bucky's at his back, but turns to spit venom at him if Bucky presumes too much. Never enough to draw the ire of the rest of the team, who prefer to ignore him, but enough that Bucky feels like they're back at square one. Then: "No. That was Stark's rational assessment, I think. He speaks a lot of reason to cover up how he feels about things."

"That's quite an insight."

"Look," Bucky says, sitting back, "I'd be even crazier than I am not to be grateful. I'm just lookin' out for the guy, is all."

Of course he's paid attention to Stark. Despite everything he's done, Stark has given him _everything._ Everything that's in his power to, anyway - Bucky has to be careful not to ask, because even if Stark hates it, he'll give that, too. Bucky has the arm to prove it. He can kind of see how a guy like Steve might find it more comfortable to turn away from that. There's no way that Steve could trust someone that generous, not in the shape he's in. He prefers to do for people, and Stark doesn't need anything done for him.

Bucky can see why, in trying to keep people close to him, Stark has ended up mostly alone. He knows better than to presume where he's not welcomed, though, and when he forgets, Stark never fails to remind him.

-0-

Of course, all good things come to an end for Bucky Barnes. It's not as if no one knows where he is. _Everyone_ knows where he is. There are legal cases going on about him, even while they allow him to stay at the Compound and do work with the Avengers. But they _know._

"You're going to change the world," the man says as he primes the machine. "You almost did, but this time we'll make sure of it. Why - with you, HYDRA can change the entire tide of the _war._ "

And then -

-0-

Bucky doesn't change the world, but his world is changed, nonetheless.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> aaaand thus begins the events of _a broke machine just blowin' steam_ yaaay!
> 
>  **Things that don't get addressed in this coda:**  
>  \- all the bonus steve-bucky drama after arriving at the compound  
> \- all the bonus steve-tony drama  
> \- 99% of the apologies  
> \- all the times [Bucky googles Tony](https://justavengeit.tumblr.com/post/167193357638/someone-commented-on-my-story-about-bucky) because he's not sure Tony is alive.  
> \- all the times Bucky goes Soldier-mode ... violently  
> \- It's not clearly addressed, but all the times Bucky's team tries to 'ground' him during his breaks with reality by telling him he's Bucky Barnes and the Soldier takes 'Bucky Barnes' to be a cover story and it takes him a while to remember that no, he _is_ Bucky Barnes.  
>  \- The Ghosts are discovered because of BARF. Even if they weren't really there, BARF pulls from his memories, so.  
> \- the fact that Tony basically went the 'I bought the bank' route in order to get his hands on Bucky  
> \- **Tony:** "The Soldier ignores me tbh"  
>  **The Soldier:** [constantly on bodyguard mode, scanning for threats] _he must be protected At All Costs_  
>  \- I don't think I ever got around to mentioning it in _a broke machine_ but yes, crazy hydra cultists sent Bucky back in time intending for him to join HYDRA again and make them win WWII.  
>  **Tony Stark upon arriving in the past, immediately:** It's fine to let Bucky roam, the Winter Soldier program hasn't been written yet  
>  **Crazy Cultists:** ... wait what lol  
>  Even zemo had figured this shit out, come on guys. 
> 
> I answered a few asks about Bucky's thoughts on Tony on my blog [here](https://justavengeit.tumblr.com/post/169708023908/what-did-bucky-think-of-tony-before-the-time) and [here](https://justavengeit.tumblr.com/post/169816413503/you-dropped-it-finders-keepers-im-dead-xd-also) and then promptly contradicted myself by signalling that Bucky and Tony were already on their way to being squishy at one another in this coda. But they would have eventually gotten there without the time traveling tbh. 
> 
> re: 'the keys to Tony's heart' - bucky doesn't mean it romantically. he also has no idea how easy tony stark really is.


End file.
